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OLIVER   WENDELL    HOLMES'S   WRITINGS. 


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ELSIE    VENNER. 


ELSIE    VENNER: 


A  ROMANCE  OF  DESTINY, 


BY  OLIVER  WENDELL  B^OLMES, 

AUTHOR  OF    "  THE  AUTOCRAT   OF  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE,"     ETC. 


IN  TWO  VOLUMES. 
VOLUME  I. 


BOSTON: 
TICKNOR    AND     FIELDS. 

M  DCCC  LXI. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1861,  by 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES, 
in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


RIVERSIDE,   CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTVIT.Il    AND    PRINTED    BT  II.  0.  HOUQBTON. 


To  THB 
SCHOOLMISTRESS 

WHO   HAS  FURNISHED  SOME  OUTLINES  MADE  USE  OF    IN    THESE 
PAGES   AND   ELSEWHERE, 

2T  J)  ( s   S  t  o  r  2    is    JDcttcatcU 

.BY  HER  OLDEST   SCHOLAR. 


PREFACE. 


THIS  tale  was  published  in  successive  parts 
in  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  under  the  name  of 
"  The  Professor's  Story,"  the  first  number  hav 
ing  appeared  in  the  third  week  of  December, 
1859.  The  critic  who  is  curious  in  coincidences 
must  refer  to  the  Magazine  for  the  date  of  pub 
lication  of  the  Chapter  he  is  examining. 

In  calling  this  narrative  a  "  romance,"  the  Au 
thor  wishes  to  make  sure  of  being  indulged  in 
the  common  privileges  of  the  poetic  license. 
Through  all  the  disguise  of  fiction  a  grave  sci 
entific  doctrine  may  be  detected  lying  beneath 
some  of  the  delineations  of  character.  He  has 
used  this  doctrine  as  a  part  of  the  machinery 
of  his  story  without  pledging  his  absolute  be 
lief  in  it  to  the  extent  to  which  it  is  asserted 
or  implied.  It  wa.  adopted  as  a  convenient 
medium  of  truth  rather  than  as  an  accepted 
scientific  conclusion.  The  reader  must  judge 


X  PREFACE. 

for  himself  what  is  the  value  of  various  stories 
cited  from  old  authors.  He  must  decide  how 
much  of  what  has  been  told  he  can  accept, 
either  as  having  actually  happened,  or  as  pos 
sible  and  more  or  less  probable.  The  Author 
must  be  permitted,  however,  to  say  here,  in  his 
personal  character,  and  as  responsible  to  the  stu 
dents  of  the  human  mind  and  body,  that  since 
this  story  has  been  in  progress  he  has  received 
the  most  startling  confirmation  of  the  possibility 
of  the  existence  of  a  character  like  that  which 
he  had  drawn  as  a  purely  imaginary  conception 
in  Elsie  Venner. 

BOSTON,  January,  1861. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 
THE   BRAHMIN   CASTE   OF   NEW   ENGLAND        .  .  .13 

CHAPTER  II. 
THE   STUDENT   AND    HIS    CERTIFICATE         ...  20 

CHAPTER  IH. 
MR.   BERNARD   TRIES    HIS    HAND 87 

CHAPTER  IV. 
THE   MOTH   FLIES   INTO    THE   CANDLE  ...  60 

CHAPTER  V. 
AN   OLD-FASHIONED    DESCRIPTIVE    CHAPTER  .  .      74 

CHAPTER  VI. 
THE    SUNBEAM    AND   THE    SHADOW       .  .  .  .  92 

CHAPTER  VH. 
THE   EVENT   OF    THE    SEASON 106 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE   MORNING   AFTER  .         151 


xii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IX. 

PAGE 

THE    DOCTOR    ORDERS    THE    BEST    SULKY    (WITH    A    DI 
GRESSION   ON   "HIRED    HELP") 170 

CHAPTER  X. 
THE   DOCTOR   CALLS   ON   ELSIE   VENNER     .  .  .176 

CHAPTER  XI. 
cousix  RICHARD'S  VISIT 188 

CHAPTER  XII. 

THE    APOLLINEAN   INSTITUTE    (WITH    EXTRACTS    FROM 

THK    "REPORT    OF    THE    COMMITTEE")    .  .  .         206 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
CURIOSITY       .' 222 

CHAPTER  XTV. 
FAMILY    SECRETS  ...'....         240 

CHAPTER  XV. 
PHYSIOLOGICAL 253 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

EPISTOLARY 272 


ELSIE   VENNER 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    BRAHMIN    CASTE    OP   NEW    ENGLAND. 

THERE  is  nothing  in  New  England  correspond 
ing  at  all  to  the  feudal  aristocracies  of  the  Old 
World.  Whether  it  be  owing  to  the  stock  from 
which  we  were  derived,  or  to  the  practical  work 
ing  of  our  institutions,  or  to  the  abrogation  of  the 
technical  "law  of  honor,"  which  draws  a  sharp 
line  between  the  personally  responsible  class  of 
"gentlemen"  and  the  unnamed  multitude  of 
those  who  are  not  expected  to  risk  their  lives  for 
an  abstraction,  —  whatever  be  the  cause,  we  have 
no  such  aristocracy  here  as  that  which  grew  up 
out  of  the  military  systems  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

What  we  mean  by  "  aristocracy  "  is  merely  the 
richer  part  of  the  community,  that  live  in  the 
tallest  houses,  drive  real  carriages,  (not  "ker- 
ridges,")  kid-glove  their  hands,  and  French-bon 
net  their  ladies'  heads,  give  parties  where  the 
persons  who  call  them  by  the  above  title  are  not 
invited,  and  have  a  provokingly  easy  way  of 


14  ELSIE  TENNER. 

dressing,  walking,  talking,  and  nodding  to  peo 
ple,  as  if  they  felt  entirely  at  home,  and  would 
not  be  embarrassed  in  the  least,  if  they  met  the 
Governor,  or  even  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  face  to  face.  Some  of  these  great  folks 
are  really  well-bred,  some  of  them  are  only  purse- 
proud  and  assuming,  —  but  they  form  a  class, 
and  are  named  as  above  in  the  common  speech. 

It  is  in  the  nature  of  large  fortunes  to  diminish 
rapidly,  when  subdivided  and  distributed.  A 
million  is  the  unit  of  wealth,  now  and  here  in 
America.  It  splits  into  four  handsome  proper 
ties  ;  each  of  these  into  four  good  inheritances ; 
these,  again,  into  scanty  competences  for  four 
ancient  maidens,  —  with  whom  it  is  best  the  fam 
ily  should  die  out,  unless  it  can  begin  again  as 
its  great-grandfather  did.  Now  a  million  is  a 
kind  of  golden  cheese,  which  represents  in  a  com 
pendious  form  the  summer's  growth  of  a  fat 
meadow  of  craft  or  commerce  ;  and  as  this  kind 
of  meadow  rarely  bears  more  than  one  crop,  it  is 
pretty  certain  that  sons  and  grandsons  will  not 
get  another  golden  cheese  out  of  it,  whether  they 
milk  the  same  cows  or  turn  in  new  ones.  In 
other  words,  the  millionocracy,  considered  in  a 
large  way,  is  not  at  -all  an  affair  of  persons  and 
families,  but  a  perpetual  fact,  of  money  with  a 
variable  human  element,  which  a  philosopher 
might  leave  out  of  consideration  without  falling 
into  serious  error.  Of  course,  this  trivial  and 
fugitive  fact  of  personal  wealth  does  not  create  a 


ELSIE   TENNER.  15 

permanent  class,  unless  some  special  means  are 
taken  to  arrest  the  process  of  disintegration  in 
the  third  generation.  This  is  so  rarely  done,  at 
least  successfully,  that  one  need  not  live  a  very 
long  life  to  see  most  of  the  rich  families  he  knew 
in  childhood  more  or  less  reduced,  and  the  mil 
lions  shifted  into  the  hands  of  the  country-boys 
who  were  sweeping  stores  and  carrying  parcels 
when  the  now  decayed  gentry  were  driving  their 
chariots,  eating  their  venison  over  silver  chafing- 
dishes,  drinking  Madeira  chilled  in  embossed 
coolers,  wearing  their  hair  in  powder,  and  casing 
their  legs  in  top  boots  with  silken  tassels. 

There  is,  however,  in  New  England,  an  aris 
tocracy,  if  you  choose  to  call  it  so,  which  has  a 
far  greater  character  of  permanence.  It  has 
grown  to  be  a  caste,  —  not  in  any  odious  sense,  — 
but,  by  the  repetition  of  the  same  influences,  gen 
eration  after  generation,  it  has  acquired  a  distinct 
organization  and  physiognomy,  which  not  to 
recognize  is  mere  stupidity,  and  not  to  be  willing 
to  describe  would  show  a  distrust  of  the  good 
nature  and  intelligence  of  our  readers,  who  like 
to  have  us  see  all  we  can  and  tell  all  we  see. 

If  you  will  look  carefully  at  any  class  of  stu 
dents  in  one  of  our  colleges,  you  will  have  no 
difficulty  in  selecting  specimens  of  two  different 
aspects  of  youthful  manhood.  Of  course  I  shall 
choose  extreme  cases  to  illustrate  the  contrast  be 
tween  them.  In  the  first,  the  figure  is  perhaps 
robust,  but  often  otherwise,  —  inelegant,  partly 


16  l.l>IK    VF.NXKR. 

from  careless  attitudes,  partly  from  ill-dressing,  — 
the  face  is  uncouth  in  feature,  or  at  least  com 
mon,  —  the  mouth  coarse  and  unformed,  —  the 
eye  unsympathetic,  even  if  bright,  —  the  move 
ments  of  the  face  are  clumsy,  like  those  of  the 
limbs,  —  the  voice  is  unmusical, —  and  the  enun 
ciation  as  if  the  words  were  coarse  castings,  in 
stead  of  fine  carvings.  The  youth  of  the  other 
aspect  is  commonly  slender, —  his  face  is  smooth, 
and  apt  to  be  pallid,  —  his  features  are  regular 
and  of  a  certain  delicacy,  —  his  eye  is  bright  and 
quick, —  his  lips  play  over  the  thought  he  utters  as 
a  pianist's  fingers  dance  over  their  music, — and 
his  whole  air,  though  it  may  be  timid,  and  even 
awkward,  has  nothing  clownish.  If  you  are  a 
teacher,  you  know  what  to  expect  from  each  of 
these  young  men.  With  equal  willingness,  the 
first  will  be  slow  at  learning ;  the  second  will 
take  to  his  books  as  a  pointer  or  a  setter  to  his 
field-work. 

The  first  youth  is  the  common  country-boy, 
whose  race  has  been  bred  to  bodily  labor.  Na 
ture  has  adapted  the  family  organization  to  the 
kind  of  life  it  has  lived.  The  hands  and  feet  by 
constant  use  have  got  more  than  their  share  of 
development,  —  the  organs  of  thought  and  ex 
pression  less  than  their  share.  The  finer  instincts 
are  latent  and  must  be  developed.  A  youth  of 
this  kind  is  raw  material  in  its  first  stage  of  elab 
oration.  You  must  not  expect  too  much  of  any 
such.  Many  of  them  have  force  of  will  and 


ELSIE   VEXXER.  17 

character,  and  become  distinguished  in  practical 
life ;  but  very  few  of  them  ever  become  great 
scholars.  (^A  scholar  is,  in  a  large  proportion  of 
cases,  the  son  of  scholars  or  scholarly  persons.  / 

That  is  exactly  what  the  other  young  man  is. 
He  comes  of  the  Brahmin  caste  of  New  Eng 
land.  This  is  the  harmless,  inoffensive,  untitled 
aristocracy  referred  to,  and  which  many  readers 
will  at  once  acknowledge.  There  are  races  of 
scholars  among  us,  in  which  aptitude  for  learn 
ing,  and  all  these  marks  of  it  I  have  spoken 
of,  are  congenital  and  hereditary.  Their  names 
are  always  on  some  college  catalogue  or  other. 
They  break  out  every  generation  or  two  in  some 
learned  labor  which  calls  them  up  after  they 
seem  to  have  died  out.  At  last  some  newer 
name  takes  their  place,  it  may  be,  —  but  you 
inquire  a  little  and  you  find  it  is  the  blood  of 
the  Edwardses  or  the  Chauncys  or  the  Ellerys 
or  some  of  the  old  historic  scholars,  disguised 
under  the  altered  name  of  a  female  descendant. 

There  probably  is  not  an  experienced  instructor 
anywhere  in  our  Northern  States  who  will  not 
recognize  at  once  the  truth  of  this  general  dis 
tinction.  But  the  reader  who  has  never  been  a 
teacher  will  very  probably  object,  that  some  of 
our  most  illustrious  public  men  have  come  direct 
from  the  homespun-clad  class  of  the  people,  — 
and  he  may,  perhaps,  even  find  a  noted  scholar 
or  two  whose  parents  were  masters  of  the  Eng 
lish  alphabet,  but  of  no  other. 


18  ELSIE  VENXER. 

It  is  not  fair  to.  pit  a  few  chosen  families 
against  the  great  multitude  of  those  who  are 
continually  working  their  way  up  into  the  intel 
lectual  classes.  The  results  which  are  habitually 
reached  by  hereditary  training  are  occasionally 
brought  about  without  it.  There  are  natural 
filters  as  well  as  artificial  ones ;  and  though  the 
great  rivers  are  commonly  more  or  less  turbid, 
if  you  will  look  long  enough,  you  may  find  a 
spring  that  sparkles  as  no  water  does  which  drips 
through  your  apparatus  of  sands  and  sponges. 
So  there  are  families  which  refine  themselves  into 
intellectual  aptitude  without  having  had  much 
opportunity  for  intellectual  acquirements.  A  se 
ries  of  felicitous  crosses  develops  an  improved 
strain  of  blood,  and  reaches  its  maximum  perfec 
tion  at  last  in  the  large  uncombed 'youth  who 
goes  to  college  and  startles  the  hereditary  class- 
leaders  by  striding  past  them  all.  That  is  Na 
ture's  republicanism  ;  thank  God  for  it,  but  do 
not  let  it  make  you  illogical.  The  race  of  the 
hereditary  scholar  has  exchanged  a  certain  por 
tion  of  its  animal  vigor  for  its  new  instincts,  and 
it  is  hard  to  lead  men  without  a  good  deal  of  ani 
mal  vigor.  The  scholar  who  comes  by  Nature's 
special  grace  from  an  unworn  stock  of  broad- 
chested  sires  and  deep-bosomed  mothers  must 
always  overmatch  an  equal  intelligence  with  a 
compromised  and  lowered  vitality.  A  man's 
breathing  and  digestive  apparatus  (one  is  tempt 
ed  to  add  muscular)  are  just  as  important  "to  him 


ELSIE  VENNER.  19 

on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  as  his  thinking  organs. 
You  broke  down  in  your  great  speech,  did  you  ? 
Yes,  your  grandfather  had  an  attack  of  dyspepsia 
in  '82,  after  working  too  hard  on  his  famous  Elec 
tion  Sermon.  All  this  does  not  touch  the  main 
fact :  four  scholars  come  chiefly  from  a  privileged 
order,  just  as  our  best  fruits  come  from  well- 
known  grafts,  —  though  now  and  then  a  seedling 
apple,  like  the  Northern  Spy,  or  a  seedling  pear, 
like  the  Seckel,  springs  from  a  nameless  ancestry 
and  grows  to  be  the  pride  of  all  the  gardens  in 
the  land. 

Let  me  introduce  you  to  a  young  man  who  be 
longs  to  the  Brahmin  caste  of  New  England. 


20  ELSIE  VENNER. 


CHAPTER  H. 

THE    STUDENT    AND    HIS    CERTIFICATE. 

BERNARD  C.  LANGDON,  a  young  man  attending 
Medical  Lectures  at  the  school  connected  with 
one  of  our  principal  colleges,  remained  after  the 
Lecture  one  day  and  wished  to  speak  with  the 
Professor.  He  was  a  student  of  mark,  —  first 
favorite  of  his  year,  as  they  say  'of  the  Derby 
colts.  There  are  in  every  class  half  a  dozen 
bright  faces  to  which  the  teacher  naturally  directs 
his  discourse,  and  by  the  intermediation  of  whose 
attention  he  seems  to  hold  that  of  the  mass  of 
listeners.  Among  these  some  one  is  pretty  sure 
to  take  the  lead,  by  virtue  of  a  personal  magnet 
ism,  or  some  peculiarity  of  expression,  which 
places  the  face  in  quick  sympathetic  relations 
with  the  lecturer.  This  was  a  young  man  with 
such  a  face;  and  I  found,  —  for  you  have  guessed 
that  1^  was  the  "  Professor  "  above-mentioned,  — 
that,  when  there  was  anything  difficult  to  be  ex 
plained,  or  when  I  was  bringing  out  some  favor 
ite  illustration  of  a  nice  point,  (as,  for  instance, 
when  I  compared  the  cell-growth,  by  which  Na 
ture  builds  up  a  plant  or  an  animal,  to  the  glass- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  21 

blower's  similar  mode  of  beginning,  —  always 
with  a  hollow  sphere,  or  vesicle,  whatever  he  is 
going  to  make,)  I  naturally  looked  in  his  face 
and  gauged  my  success  by  its  expression. 

It  was  a  handsome  face,  —  a  little  too  pale, 
perhaps,  and  would  have  borne  something  more 
of  fulness  without  becoming  heavy.  I  put  the 
organization  to  which  it  belongs  in  Section  B  of 
Class  1  of  my  Anglo-American  Anthropology 
(unpublished).  The  jaw  in  this  section  is  but 
slightly  narrowed, — just  enough  to  make  the 
width  of  the  forehead  tell  more  decidedly.  The 
moustache  often  grows  vigorously,  but  the  whis 
kers  are  thin.  The  skin  is  like  that  of  Jacob, 
rather  than  like  Esau's.  One  string  of  the  ani 
mal  nature  has  been  taken  away,  but  this  gives 
only  a  greater  predominance  to  the  intellectual 
chords.  To  see  just  how  the  vital  energy  has 
been  toned  down,  you  must  contrast  one  of  this 
section  with  a  specimen  of  Section  A  of  the 
same  class,  —  say,  for  instance,  one  of  the  old- 
fashioned,  full-whiskered,  red-faced,  roaring,  big 
Commodores  of  the  last  generation,  whom  you 
remember,  at  least  by  their  portraits,  in  ruffled 
shirts,  looking  as  hearty  as  butchers  and  as  plucky 
as  bull-terriers,  with  their  hair  combed  straight  up 
from  their  foreheads,  which  were  not  commonly 
very  high  or  broad.  The  special  form  of  physical 
life  I  have  been  describing  gives  you  a  right  to 
expect  more  delicate  perceptions  and  a  more 
reflective  nature  than  you  commonly  find  in 


22  ELSIE   VENNER. 

shaggy-throated  men,  clad  in  heavy  suits  of  mus 
cles. 

The  student  lingered  in  the  lecture-room,  look 
ing  all  the  time  as  if  he  wanted  to  say  something 
in  private,  and  waiting  for  two  or  three  others, 
who  were  still  hanging  about,  to  be  gone. 

Something  is  wrong !  —  I  said  to  myself,  when 
I  noticed  his  expression.  —  Well,  Mr.  Langdon, 
—  I  said  to  him,  when  we  were  alone,  —  can  I  do 
anything  for  you  to-day  ? 

You  can,  Sir, —  he  said.  —  I  am  going  to  leave 
the  class,  for  the  present,  and  keep  school. 

Why,  that's  a  pity,  and  you  so  near  graduat 
ing  !  You'd  better  stay  and  finish  this  course, 
and  take  your  degree  in  the  spring,  rather  than 
break  up  your  whole  plan  of  study. 

I  can't  help  myself,  Sir,  —  the  young  man  an 
swered.  —  There's  trouble  at  home,  and  they  can 
not  keep  me  here  as  they  have  done.  So  I  must 
look  out  for  myself  for  a  while.  It  's^what  I  've 
done  before,  and  am  ready  to  do  again.  I  came 
to  ask  you  for  a  certificate  of  my  fitness  to  teach 
a  common  school,  or  a  high  school,  if  you  think 
I  am  up  to  that.  Are  you  willing  to  give  it  to 
me? 

Willing  ?  Yes,  to  be  sure,  —  but  I  don't  want 
you  to  go.  Stay ;  we  '11  make  it  easy  for  you. 
There 's  a  fund  will  do  something  for  you,  per 
haps.  Then  you  can  take  both  the  annual  prizes, 
if  you  like,  —  and  claim  them  in  money,  if  you 
want  that  more  than  medals. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  23 

I  have  thought  it  all  over,  —  he  answered,  — 
and  have  pretty  much  made  up  my  mind  to  go. 

A  perfectly  gentlemanly  young  man,  of  cour 
teous  address  and  mild  utterance,  but  means  at 
least  as  much  as  he  says.  There  are  some  people 
whose  rhetoric  consists  of  a  slight  habitual  under 
statement.  I  often  tell  Mrs.  Professor  that  one  of 
her  "  I  think  it 's  sos  "  is  worth  the  Bible-oath  of  all 
the  rest  of  the  household  that  they  "  know  it 's 
so."  When  you  find  a  person  a  little  better  than 
his  word,  a  little  more  liberal  than  his  promise,  a 
little  more  than  borne  out  in  his  statement  by  his 
facts,  a  little  larger  in  deed  than  in  speech,  you 
recognize  a  kind  of  eloquence  in  that  person's 
utterance  not  laid  down  in  Blair  or  Campbell. 

This  was  a  proud  fellow,  self-trusting,  sensitive, 
with  family-recollections  that  made  him  unwill 
ing- to  accept  the  kind  of  aid  which  many  stu 
dents  would  have  thankfully  welcomed.  I<knew 
him  too  well  to  urge  him,  after  the  few  words 
which  implied  that  he  was  determined  to  go. 
Besides,! I  have  great  confidence  in  young  men 
who  believe  in  themselves,  and  are  accustomed  to 
rely  on  their  own  resources  from  an  early  period. 
When  a  resolute  young  fellow  steps  up  to  the 
great  bully,  the s  World,  and  takes  him  boldly  by 
the  beard,  he  is  often  surprised  to  find  it  come  off 
in  his  hand,  and  that  it  was  only  tied  on  to  scare 
away  timid  adventurers.  I  have  seen  young  men 
more  than  once,  who  came  to  a  great  city  without 
a  single  friend,  support  themselves  and  pay  for 


24  ELSIE  VENNER. 

their  education,  lay  up  money  in  a  few  years, 
grow  rich  enough  to  travel,  and  establish  them 
selves  in  life,  Without  ever  asking  a  dollar  of  any 
person  which  they  had  not  earned.  But  these  are 
exceptional  cases.  There  are  horse-tamers,  born 
so,  as  we  all  know  ;  there  are  woman-tamers  who 
bewitch  the  sex  as  the  pied  piper  bedeviled  the 
children  of  Hamelin  ;  and  there  are  world-tamers, 
who  can  make  any  community,  even  a  Yankee 
one,  get  down  and  let  them  jump  on  its  back  as 
easily  as  Mr.  Rarey  saddled  Cruiser. 

Whether  Langdon  was  of  this  sort  or  not  I 
could  not  say  positively ;  but  he  had  spirit,  and, 
as  I  have  said,  a  family-pride  which  would  not 
let  him  be  dependent.  The  New  England  Brah 
min  caste  often  gets  blended  with  connections  of 
political  influence  or  commercial  distinction.  It 
is  a  charming  thing  for  the  scholar,  when  his  for 
tune  carries  him  in  this  way  into  some  of  the 
"  old  families"  who  have  fine  old  houses,  and  city- 
lots  that  have  risen  in  the  market,  and  names 
written  in  all  the  stock-books  of  all  the  dividend- 
paying  companies.  His  narrow  study  expands 
into  a  stately  library,  his  books  are  counted  by 
thousands  instead  of  hundreds,  and  his  favorites 
are  dressed  in  gilded  calf  in  place  of  plebeian 
sheepskin  or  its  pauper  substitutes  of  cloth  and 
paper. 

The  Reverend  Jedediah  Langdon,  grandfather 
of  our  young  gentleman,  had  made  an  advan 
tageous  alliance  of  this  kincfr  Miss  Dorothea 


ELSIE  VENNER.  25 

Wentworth  had  read  one  of  his  sermons  which 
had  been  printed  "  by  request,"  and  became 
deeply  interested  in  the  young  author,  whom 
she  had  never  seen.  Out  of  this  circumstance 
grew  a  correspondence,  an  interview,  a  dec 
laration,  a  matrimonial  alliance,  and  a  family 
of  half  a  dozen  children.  Wentworth  Lang- 
don,  Esquire,  was  the  oldest  of  these,  and 
lived  in  the  old  family-mansion.  Unfortunately, 
tliat  principle  of  the  diminution  of  estates  by 
division,  to  which  I  have  referred,  rendered 
it  somewhat  difficult  to  maintain  the  estab 
lishment  upon  the  fractional  income"  which  the 
proprietor  received  from  his  share  of  the  prop 
erty.  Wentworth  Langdon,  Esq.,  represented 
a  certain  intermediate  condition  of  life  not  at 
all  infrequent  in  our  old  families.  He  was  the 
connecting  link  between  the  generation  which 
lived  in  ease,  and  even  a  kind  of  state,  upon  its 
own  resources,  and  the  new  brood,  which  must 
live  mainly  by  its  wits'  or  industry,  and  make  it 
self  rich,  or  shabbily  subside  into  that  lower  stra 
tum  known  to  social  geologists  by  a  deposit  of 
Kidderminster  carpets  and  the  peculiar  aspect 
of  the  fossils  constituting  the  family  furniture 
and  wardrobe.  This  slack-water  period  of  a 
race,  which  comes  before  the  rapid  ebb  of  its 
prosperity,  is  familiar  to  all  who  live  in  cities. 
There  are  no  more  quiet,  inoffensive  people  than 
these  children  of  rich  families,  just  above  the  ne 
cessity  of  active  employment,  yet  not  in  a  condi- 


26  ELSIE  VENNER. 

tion  to  place  their  own  children  advantageously, 
if  they  happen  to  have  families.  Many  of  them 
are  content  to  live  unmarried.  Some  mend  their 
broken  fortunes  by  prudent  alliances,  and  some 
leave  a  numerous  progeny  to  pass  into  the  obscu 
rity  from  which  their  ancestors  emerged ;  so  that 
you  may  see  on  handcarts  and  cobblers'  stalls 
names  which,  a  few  generations  back,  were  upon 
parchments  with  broad  seals,  and  tombstones  with 
armorial  bearings. 

In  a  large  city,  this  class  of  citizens  is  familiar 
to  us  in  the  streets.  They  are  very  courteous  in 
their  salutations  ;  they  have  time  enough  to  bow 
and  take  their  hats  off,  —  which,  of  course,  no 
business-man  can  afford  to  do.  Their  beavers  are 
smoothly  brushed,  and  their  boots  well  polished; 
all  their  appointments  are  tidy  ;  they  look  the  re 
spectable  walking  gentleman  to  perfection.  They 
are  prone  to  habits — to  frequent  reading-rooms, 
insurance-offices,  —  to  walk  the  same  streets  at 
the  same  hours  —  so  that  one  becomes  familiar 
with  their  faces  and  persons,  as  a  part  of  the 
street-furniture. 

There  is  one  curious  circumstance,  that  all  city- 
people  must  have  noticed,  which  is  often  illus 
trated  in  our  experience  of  the  slack-water  gentry. 
We  shall  know  a  certain  person  by  his  looks,  fa 
miliarly,  for  years,  but  never  have  learned  his 
name.  About  this  person  we  shall  have  accumu 
lated  no  little  circumstantial  knowledge  ;  —  thus, 
his  face,  figure,  gait,  his  mode  of  dressing,  of  sa- 


ELSIE  VENNEK.  27 

luting,  perhaps  even  of  speaking,  may  be  familiar 
to  us ;  yet  who  he  is  we  know  not.  In  another 
department  of  our  consciousness,  there  is  a  very 
familiar  name,  which  we  have  never  found  the  per 
son  to  match.  We  have  heard  it  so  often,  that  it 
has  idealized  itself,  and  become  one  of  that  mul 
titude  of  permanent  shapes  which  walk  the  cham 
bers  of  the  brain  in  velvet  slippers  in  the  company 
of  Falstaff  and  Hamlet  and  General  Washington 
and  Mr.  Pickwick.  Sometimes  the  person  dies, 
but  the  name  lives  on  indefinitely.  But  now  and 
then  it  happens,  perhaps  after  years  of  this  inde 
pendent  existence  of  the  name  and  its  shadowy 
image  in  the  brain,  on  the  one  part,  and  the  per 
son  and  all  its  real  attributes,  as  we  see  them 
daily,  on  the  other,  that  some  accident  reveals 
their  relation,  and  we  find  the  name  we  have  car 
ried  so  long  in  our  memory  belongs  to  the  person 
we  have  known  so  long  as  a  fellow-citizen.  Now 
the  slack-water  gentry  are  among  the  persons 
most  likely  to  be  the  subjects  of  this  curious  di 
vorce  of  title  and  reality, — for  the  reason,  that, 
playing  no  important  part  in  the  community,  there 
is  nothing  to  tie  the  floating  name  to  the  actual 
individual,  as  is  the  case  with  the  men  who  belong 
in  any  way  to  the  public,  while  yet  their  names 
have  a  certain  historical  currency,  and  we  cannot 
help  meeting  them,  either  in  their  haunts,  or  going 
to  and  from  them. 

To  this  class  belonged  Wentworth   Langdon, 
Esq.    He  had  been  "  dead-headed  "  into  the  world 


28  ELSIE  VENNER. 

some  fifty  years  ago,  and  had  sat  with  his  hands 
in  his  pockets  staring  at  the  show  ever  since.     I 
shall  not  tell  you,  for  reasons  before  hinted,  the 
whole  name  of  the  place  in  which  he  lived.     I 
will  only  point  you  in  the  right  direction,  by  say 
ing  that  there  are  three  towns  lying  in  a  line  with 
each  other,  as  you  go  "  down  East,"  each  of  them 
with  a  Port  in  its  name,  and  each  of  them  having 
a  peculiar  interest  which  gives  it  individuality,  in 
addition  to  the   Oriental  character  they  have  in 
common.     I  need  not  tell  you  that  these  towns 
are  Newburyport,  Portsmouth,  and  Portland.    The 
Oriental  character  they  have  in  common  consists 
in  their  large,  square,  palatial  mansions,  with  sun 
ny  gardens  round  them.     The  two  first  have  seen 
better  days.     They  are  in  perfect  harmony  with 
the  condition  of  weakened,  but  not  impoverished, 
gentility.     Each  of  them  is  a  "  paradise  of  demi- 
fortunes."     Each  of  them   is  of   that  intermedi 
ate    size   between    a/-  village    and   a  city   which 
any   place  has  outgrown  when  the  presence  of  a 
well-dressed  stranger  walking  up   and  down  the 
main  street  ceases  to  be  a  matter  of  public  curi 
osity  and  private  speculation,  as  frequently  hap 
pens,   during  the  busier  months   of  the  year,  in 
considerable    commercial     centres     like    Salem. 
They  both  have  grand   old   recollections   to   fall 
back  upon,  —  times    when    they  looked    forward 
to   commercial   greatness,  and  when  the  portly 
gentlemen  in  cocked  hats,  who  built  their  now 
decaying  wharves  and  sent  out  their  ships  all  over 


ELSIE  VENNER.  29 

the  world,  dreamed  that  their  fast-growing  port 
was  to  be  the  Tyre  or  the  Carthage  of  the  rich 
British  Colony.  Great  houses,  like  that  once 
lived  in  by  Lord  Timothy  Dexter,  in  Newbury- 
port,  remain  as  evidence  of  the  fortunes  amassed 
in  these  places  of  old.  Other  mansions  —  like 
the  Rockingham  House  in  Portsmouth  (look  at 
the  white  horse's  tail  before  you  mount  the  broad 
staircase)  show  that  there  was  not  only  wealth, 
but  style  and  state,  in  these  quiet  old  towns  dur 
ing  the  last  century.  It  is  not  with  any  thought 
of  pity  or  depreciation  that  we  speak  of  them  as 
in  a  certain  sense  decayed  towns ;  they  did  not 
fulfil  their  early  promise  of  expansion,  but  they 
remain  incomparably  the  most  interesting  places 
of  their  size  in  any  of  the  three  northernmost 
New  England  States.  They  have  even  now  pros 
perity  enough  to  keep  them  in  good  condition,  and 
offer  the  most  attractive  residences  for  quiet  fami 
lies,  which,  if  they  had  been  English,  would  have 
lived  in  a  palazzo  at  Genoa  or  Pisa,  or  some  other 
Continental  Newburyport  or  Portsmouth. 

As  for  the  last  of  the  three  Ports,  or  Portland, 
it  is  getting  too  prosperous  to  be  as  attractive 
as  its  less  northerly  neighbors.  Meant  for  a  fine 
old  town,  to  ripen  like  a  Cheshire  cheese  within 
its  walls  of  ancient  rind,  burrowed  by  crooked 
alleys  and  mottled  with  venerable  mould,  it 
seems  likely  to  sacrifice  its  mellow  future  to  a 
vulgar  material  prosperity.  Still  it  remains  in 
vested  with  many  of  its  old  charms,  as  yet,  and 


30  ELSIE  VENNER. 

will  forfeit  its  place  among  this  admirable  trio 
only  when  it  gets  a  hotel  with  unequivocal 
marks  of  having  been  built  and  organized  in 
the  present  century. 

It  was  one  of  the  old  square  palaces  of 

the  North,  in  which  Bernard  Langdon,  the  son 
of  Wentworth,  was  born.  If  he  had  had  the 
luck  to  be  an  only  child,  he  might  have  lived 
as  his  father  had  done,  letting  his  meagre  com 
petence  smoulder  on  almost  without  consuming, 
like  the  fuel  in  an  air-tight  stove.  But  after 
Master  Bernard  came  Miss  Dorothea  Elizabeth 
Wentworth  Langdon,  and  then  Master  William 
Pepperell  Langdon,  and  others,  equally  well 
named,  —  a  string  of  them,  looking,  when  they 
stood  in  a  row  in  prayer-time,  as  if  they  would 
fit  a  set  of  Pandean  pipes,  of  from  three  feet 
upward  in  dimensions.  The  door  of  the  air 
tight  stove  has  to  be  opened,  under  such  circum 
stances,  you  may  well  suppose !  So  it  happened 
that  our  young  man  had  been  obliged,  from  an 
early  period,  to  do  something  to  support  himself, 
and  found  himself  stopped  short  in  his  studies 
by  the  inability  of  the  good  people  at  home  to 
furnish  him  the  present  means  of  support  as  a 
student. 

You  will  understand  now  why  the  young  man 
wanted  me  to  give  him  a  certificate  of  his  fit 
ness  to  teach,  and  why  I  did  not  choose  to  urge 
him  to  accept  the  aid  which  a  meek  country- 
boy  from  a  family  without  ante-Revolutionary 


ELSIE  VENNER.  31 

recollections  would  have  thankfully  received.  Go 
he  must,  —  that  was  plain  enough.  He  would 
not  be  content  otherwise.  He  was  not,  how 
ever,  to  give  up  his  studies ;  and  as  it  is  cus 
tomary  to  allow  half-time  to  students  engaged 
in  school-keeping,  —  that  is,  to  count  a  year,  so 
employed,  if  the  student  also  keep  on  with  his 
professional  studies,  as  equal  to  six  months  of 
the  three  years  he  is  expected  to  be  under  an 
instructor  before  applying  for  his  degree,  —  he 
would  not  necessarily  lose  more  than  a  few 
months  of  time.  He  had  a  small  library  of  pro 
fessional  books,  which  he  could  take  with  him. 

So  he  left  my  teaching  and  that  of  my  estima 
ble  colleagues,  carrying  with  him  my  certificate, 
that  Mr.  Bernard  C.  Langdon  was  a  young  gen 
tleman  of  excellent  moral  character,  of  high  in 
telligence  and  good  education,  and  that  his  ser 
vices  would  be  of  great  value  in  any  school, 
academy,  or  other  institution,  where  young  per 
sons  of  either  sex  were  to  be  instructed. 

I  confess,  that  expression,  "  either  sex,"  ran  a 
little  thick,  as  I  may  say,  from  my  pen.  For, 
although  the  young  man  bore  a  very  fair  char 
acter,  and  there  was  no  special  cause  for  doubt 
ing  his  discretion,  I  considered  him  altogether 
too  good-looking,  in  the  first  place,  to  be  let  loose 
in  a  room-full  of  young  girls.  I  didn't  want  him 
to  fall  in  love  just  then,  —  and  if  half  a  dozen 
girls  fell  in  love  with  him,  as  they  most  assuredly 
would,  if  brought  into  too  near  relations  with 


32  ELSIE  VENNER. 

him,  why,  there  was  no  telling  what  gratitude 
and  natural  sensibility  might  bring  about. 

Certificates  are,  for  the  most  part,  like  ostrich- 
eggs  ;  the  giver  never  knows  what  is  hatched  out 
of  them.  But  once  in  a  thousand  times  they  act 
as  curses  are  said  to, — come  home  to  roost.  Give 
them  often  enough,  until  it  gets  to  be  a  mechanical 
business,  and,  some  day  or  other,  you  will  get 
caught  warranting  somebody's  ice  not  to  melt  in 
any  climate,  or  somebody's  razors  to  be  safe  in 
the  hands  of  the  youngest  children. 

I  had  an  uneasy  feeling,  after  giving  this  cer 
tificate.  It  might  be  all  right  enough  ;  but  if  it 
happened  to  end  badly,  I  should  always  reproach 
myself.  There  was  a  chance,  certainly,  that  it 
would  lead  him  or  others  into  danger  or  wretch 
edness.  Any  one  who  looked  at  this  young  man 
could  not  fail  to  see  that  he  was  capable  of 
fascinating  and  being  fascinated.  Those  large, 
dark  eyes  of  his  would  sink  into  the  white  soul 
of  a  young  girl  as  the  black  cloth  sunk  into  the 
snow  in  Franklin's  famous  experiment.  Or,  on 
the  other  hand,  if  the  rays  of  a  passionate  nature 
should  ever  be  concentrated  on  them,  they  would 
be"  absorbed  into  the  very  depths  of  his  nature, 
and  then  his  blood  would  turn  to  flame  and  burn 
his  life  out  of  him,  until  his  cheeks  grew  as  white 
as  the  ashes  that  cover  a  burning  coal. 

I  wish  I  had  not  said  either  sex  in  my  certificate. 
An  academy  for  young  gentlemen,  now ;  that 
sounds  cool  and  unimaginative.  A  boys'  school ; 


ELSIE  VENNER.  33 

that  would  be  a  very  good  place  for  him ; — some 
of  them  are  pretty  rough,  but  there  is  nerve 
enough  in  that  old  Wentworth  strain  of  blood ; 
he  can  give  any  country  fellow,  of  the  common 
stock,  twenty  pounds,  and  hit  him  out  of  time  in 
ten  minutes.  But  to  send  such  a  young  fellow 
as  that  out  a  girl's-nesting!  to  give  this  falcon  a 
free  pass  into  all  the  dove-cotes !  I  was  a  fool, 
—  that's  all. 

I  brooded  over  the  mischief  which  might  come 
out  of  these  two  words  until  it  seemed  to  me 
that  they  were  charged  with  destiny.  I  could 
hardly  sleep  for  thinking  what  a  train  I  might 
have  been  laying,  which  might  take  a  spark  any 
day,  and  blow  up  nobody  knows  whose  peace  or 
prospects.  What  I  dreaded  most  was  one  of 
those  miserable  matrimonial  misalliances  where 
a  young  fellow  who  does  not  know  himself  as 
yet  flings  his  magnificent  future  into  the  checked 
apron-lap  of  some  fresh-faced,  half-bred  country- 
girl,  no  more  fit  to  be  mated  with  him  than  her 
father's  horse  to  go  in  double  harness  with  Flora 
Temple.  To  think  of  the  eagle's  wings  being 
clipped  so  that  he  shall  never  lift  himself  over  the 
farm-yard  fence !  /  Such  things  happen,  and  al 
ways  must,  4—  because,  as  one  of  us  said  awhile 
ago,  a  man  always  loves  a  woman,  and  a  woman 
a  man,  unless  some  good  reason  exists  to  the 
contrary.  You  think  yourself  a  very  fastidious 
young  man,  my  friend  ;  but  there  are  probably  at 
least  five  thousand  young  women  in  these  United 


34  ELSIE  VENNER. 

States,  any  one  of  whom  you  would  certainly 
marry,  if  you  were  thrown  much  into  her  com 
pany,  and  nobody  more  attractive  were  near,  and 
she  had  no  objection.  And  you,  my  dear  young 
lady,  justly  pride  yourself  on  your  discerning  del 
icacy  ;  but  if  I  should  say  that  there  are  twenty 
thousand  young  men,  any  one  of  whom,  if  he 
offered  his  hand  and  heart  under  favorable  cir 
cumstances,  you  would 

"  First  endure,  then  pity,  then  embrace," 

I  should  be  much  more  imprudent  than  I  mean 
to  be,  and  you  would,  no  doubt,  throw  down  a 
story  in  which  I  hope  to  interest  you. 

I  had  settled  it  in  my  mind  that  this  young 
fellow  had  a  career  marked  out  for  him.  He 
should  begin  in  the  natural  way,  by  taking  care 
of  poor  patients  in  one  of  the  public  charities, 
and  work  his  way  up  to  a  better  kind  of  practice, 
—  better,  that  is,  in  the  vulgar,  worldly  sense. 
The  great  and  good  Boerhaave  used  to  say,  as 
I  remember  ver^y  well,  that  the  poor  were  his  best 
patients;  for  God  was  their  paymaster.  But 
everybody  is  not  as  patient  as  Boerhaave,  nor  as 
deserving ;  so  that  the  rich,  though  not,  perhaps, 
the  best  patients,  are  good  enough  for  common 
practitioners.  I  suppose  Boerhaave  put  up  with 
them  when  he  could  not  get  poor  ones,  as  he  left 
his  daughter  two  millions  of  florins  when  he  died. 

Now  if  this  young  man  once  got  into  the  wide 
streets,  he  would  sweep  them  clear  of  his  rivals  of 


ELSIE  TENNER.  35 

the  same  standing;  and  as  I  was  getting  indif 
ferent  to  business,  and  old  Dr.  Kilham  was  grow 
ing  careless,  and  had  once  or  twice  prescribed 
morphine  when  he  meant  quinine,  there  would 
soon  be  an  opening  into  the  Doctor's  Paradise, 
—  the  streets  with  only  one  side  to  them.  Then  I 
would  have  him  strike  a  bold  stroke,  —  set  up  a 
nice  little  coach,  and  be  driven  round  like  a  first- 
class  London  doctor,  instead  of  coasting  about 
in  a  shabby  one-horse  concern  and  casting  anchor 
opposite  his  patients'  doors  like  a  Cape- Ann  fish 
ing-smack.  By  the  time  he  was  thirty,  he  would 
have  knocked  the  social  pawns  out  of  his  way, 
and  be  ready  to  challenge  a  wife  from  the  row  of 
great  pieces  in  the  background.  I  would  not  have 
a  man  marry  above  his  level,  so  as  to  become  the 
appendage  of  a  powerful  family-connection  ;  but 
I  would  not  have  him  marry  until  he  knew  his 
level,  —  that  is,  again,  looking  at  the  matter  in  a 
purely  worldly  point  of  view,  and  not  taking  the 
sentiments  at  all  into  consideration.  But  remem-  \ 
/ber,  that  a  young  man,  using  large  endowments  \ 
/  wisely  and  fortunately,  may  put  himself  on  a  VI 
level  with  the  highest  in  the  land  in  ten  brilliant  A\ 
years  of  spirited,  unflagging  labor.  /And  to  stand  1}  \ 
at  the  very  top  of  your  calling  in  a  great  city  is  / 
something  in  itself,  V-  that  is,  if  you  like  money 
)  and  influence,  and  a  seat  on  the  platform  at  pub 
lic  lectures,  and  gratuitous  tickets  to  all  sorts  of 
places  where  you  don't  want  to  go,^and,  what  is 
a  good  deal  better  than  any  of  these  things,  a 


36  KLSIE  VENNER. 

sense  of  power,  limited,  it  may  be,  but  absolute, 
in  its  range,  so  that  all  the  Cassars  and  Napoleons 
would  have  to  stand  aside,  if  they  came  between 
you  and  the  exercise  of  your  special  vocation.,} 

That  is  what  I  thought  this  young  fellow  might 
have  come  to ;  and  now  I  have  let  him  go  off  into 
the  country  with  my  certificate,  that  he  is  fit  to 
teach  in  a  school  for  either  sex!  Ten  to  one  he 
will  run  like  a  moth  into  a  candle,  right  into  one 
of  those  girls'-nests,  and  get  tangled  up  in  some 
sentimental  folly  or  other,  and  there  will  be  the 
end  of  him.  Oh,  yes!  country  doctor, —  half  a 
dollar  a  visit,  —  ride,  ride,  ride  all  day,  —  get  up 
at  night  and  harness  your  own  horse, — ride  again 
ten  miles  in  a  snow-storm,  —  shake  powders  out 
of  two  phials,  (pulv.  glycyrrhiz.,  pulv.  gum.  acac. 
aa  paries  equates,*)  —  ride  back  again,  if  you 
don't  happen  to  get  stuck  in  a  drift,  —  no  home, 
no  peace,  no  continuous  meals,  no  unbroken 
sleep,  no  Sunday,  no  holiday,  no  social  inter 
course,  but  one  eternal  jog,  jog,  jog,  in  a  sulky, 
until  you  feel  like  the  mummy  of  an  Indian  who 
had  been  buried  in  the  sitting  posture,  and  was 
dug  up  a  hundred  years  afterwards!  Why  didn't 
I  warn  him  about  love  and  all  that  nonsense  ? 
Why  didn't  I  tell  him  he  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it,  yet  awhile  ?  Why  didn't  I  hold  up  to  him 
those  awful  examples  I  could  have  cited,  where 
poor  young  fellows  who  could  just  keep  them 
selves  afloat  have  hung  a  matrimonial  millstone 
round  their  necks,  taking  it  for  a  life-preserver  ? 

All  this  of  two  words  in  a  certificate ! 


ELSIE  VENNER.  37 


CHAPTER  III. 

MR.    BERNARD    TRIES    HIS    HAND. 

WHETHER  the  Student  advertised  for  a  school, 
or  whether  he  fell  in  with  the  advertisement  of  a 
school-committee,  is  not  certain.  At  any  rate,  it 
was  not  long  before  he  found  himself  the  head  of 
a  large  district,  or,  as  it  was  called  by  the  inhab 
itants,  "deestric"  school,  in  the  nourishing  inland 
village  of  Pequawkett,  or,  as  it  is  commonly 
spelt,  Pigwacket  Centre.  The  natives  of  this 
place  would  be  surprised,  if  they  should  hear 
that  any  of  the  readers  of  a  work  published  in 
Boston  were  unacquainted  with  so  remarkable  a 
locality.  As,  however,  some  copies  of  it  may  be 
read  at  a  distance  from  this  distinguished  me 
tropolis,  it  may  be  well  to  give  a  few  particulars 
respecting  the  place,  taken  from  the  Universal 
Gazetteer. 

"  PIGWACKET,  sometimes  spelt  Pequawkett.  A  post-village 
and  township  in Co.,  State  of ,  situated  in  a  fine  agri 
cultural  region,  2  thriving  villages,  Pigwacket  Centre  and 
Smithvillc,  3  churches,  several  school-houses,  and  many  hand 
some  private  residences.  Mink  River  runs  through  the  town, 
navigable  for  small  boats  after  heavy  rains.  Muddy  Pond  at 


38  ELSIE  VENNER. 

N.  E.  section,  well  stocked  with  born  pouts,  eels,  and  shiners. 
Products,  beef,  pork,  butter,  cheese.  Manufactures,  shoe-pegs, 
clothes-pins,  and  tin-ware.  Pop.  1373." 

The  reader  may  think  there  is  nothing  very 
remarkable  implied  in  this  description.  If,  how 
ever,  he  had  read  the  town-history,  by  the  Rey. 
Jabez  Grubb,  he  would  have  learned,  that,  like 
the  celebrated  Little  Pedlington,  it  was  distin 
guished  by  many  very  remarkable  advantages. 
Thus:  — 


"  The  situation  of  Pigwacket  is  eminently  beautiful,  looking 
down  the  lovely  valley  of  Mink  River,  a  tributary  of  the  Mus 
quash.  The  air  is  salubrious,  and  many  of  the  inhabitants 
have  attained  great  age,  several  having  passed  the  allotted 
period  of  '  three-score  years  and  ten  '  before  succumbing  to 
any  of  the  various  '  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to.'  Widow  Comfort 
Leevins  died  in  1836,  JEt.  LXXXVII.  years.  Venus,  an 
African,  died  in  1841,  supposed  to  be  C.  years  old.  The  peo 
ple  are  distinguished  for  intelligence,  as  has  been  frequently 
remarked  by  eminent  lyceum-Iecturers,  who  have  invariably 
spoken  in  the  highest  terms  of  a  Pigwacket  audience.  There 
is  a  public  library,  containing  nearly  a  hundred  volumes,  free 
to  all  subscnbers.  The  preached  word  is  well  attended,  there 
is  a  flourishing  temperance  society,  and  the  schools  are  excel 
lent.  It  is  a  residence  admirably  adapted  to  refined  families 
who  relish  the  beauties  of  Nature  and  the  charms  of  society. 
The  Honorable  John  Smith,  formerly  a  member  of  the  State 
Senate,  was  a  native  of  this  town." 

That  is  the  way  they  all  talk.  After  all,  it  is 
probably  pretty  much  like  other  inland  New  Eng 
land  towns  in  point  of  "salubrity," — that  is,  gives 
people  their  choice  of  dysentery  or  fever  every  au- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  '  39 

tumn,  with  a  season-ticket  for  consimj£tiona  good 
all  the  year  roundJ  And  so  of  the  other  pretences. 
"  Pigwacket  audience,."  forsooth !  Was  there  ever 
an  audience  anywhere,  though  there  wasn't  a  pair 
of  eyes  in  it  brighter  than  pickled  oysters,  that 
didn't  think  it  was  "  distinguished  for  intelli 
gence  "  ?  —  "  The  preached  word  "  !  That  means 
the  Rev.  Jabez  Grubb's  sermons.  "  Temperance 
society  " !  "  Excellent  schools  " !  Ah,  that  is  just 
what  we  were  talking  about. 

The  truth  was,  that  District  No.  1,  Pigwacket 
Centre,  had  had  a  good  deal  of  trouble  of  late 
with  its  schoolmasters.  The  committee  had  done 
their  best,  but  there  were  a  number  of  well-grown 
and  pretty  rough  young  feUows  who  had  got  the 
upperhand  of  the  masters,  and  meant  to  keep  it. 
Two  dynasties  had  fallen  before  the  uprising  of 
this  fierce  democracy.  This  was  a  thing  that 
used  to  be  not  very  uncommon  ;  but  in  so  "  in 
telligent  "  a  community  as  that  of  Pigwacket 
Centre,  in  an  era  of  public  libraries  and  lyceum- 
lectures,  it  was  portentous  and .  alarming. 

The  rebellion  began  under  the  ferule  of  Mas 
ter  Weeks,  a  slender  youth  from  a  country  col 
lege,  under-fed,  thin-blooded,  sloping-shouldered, 
knock-kneed,  straight-haired,  weak-bearded,  pale- 
eyed,  wide-pupilled,  half-colored ;  a  common  type 
enough  in  in-door  races,  not  rich  enough  to  pick 
and  choose  in  their  alliances.  Nature  kills  off  a 
good  many  of  this  sort  in  the  first  teething-time, 
a  few  in  later  childhood,  a  good  many  again  in 


40  ELSIE  VENNER. 

early  adolescence ;  but  every  now  and  then  one 
runs  the  gauntlet  of  her 'various  diseases,  or  rather 
forms  of  one  disease,  and  grows  up,  as  Master 
Weeks  had  done. 

It  was  a  very  foolish  thing  for  him  to  try  to  in 
flict  personal  punishment  on  such  a  lusty  young 
fellow  as  Abner  Briggs,  Junior,  one  of  the  "  hard 
est  customers  "  in  the  way  of  a  rough-and-tumble 
fight  that  there  were  anywhere  round.  No  doubt 
he  had  been  insolent,  but  it  would  have  been  bet 
ter  to  overlook  it.  It  pains  me  to  report  the  events 
which  took  place  when  the  master  made  his  rash 
attempt  to  maintain  his  authority.  Abner  Briggs, 
Junior,  was  a  great,  hulking  fellow,  who  had  been 
bred  to  butchering,  but  urged  by  his  parents  to 
attend  school,  in  order  to  learn  the  elegant  accom 
plishments  of  reading  and  writing,  in  which  he 
was  sadly  deficient.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  talk 
ing  and  laughing  pretty  loud  in  school-hours,  of 
throwing  wads  of  paper  reduced  to  a  pulp  by  a 
natural  and  easy  process,  of  occasional  insolence 
and  general  negligence.  One  of  the  soft,  but  un 
pleasant  missiles  just  alluded  to,  flew  by  the  mas 
ter's  head  one  morning,  and  flattened  itself  against 
the  wall,  where  it  adhered  in  the  form  of  a  convex 
mass  in  alto  rilievo.  The  master  looked  round 
and  saw  the  young  butcher's  arm  in  an  attitude 
which  pointed  to  it  unequivocally  as  the  source 
from  which  the  projectile  had  taken  its  flight. 

Master  Weeks  turned  pale.  He  must  "  lick " 
Abner  Briggs,  Junior,  or  abdicate.  So  he  deter 
mined  to  lick  Abner  Briggs,  Junior. 


ELSIE  VENNEIJ.  41 

"  Come  here,  Sir ! "  he  said ;  "  you  have  in 
sulted  me  and  outraged  the  decency  of  the  school 
room  often  enough  !  Hold  out  your  hand  !  " 

The  young  fellow  grinned  and  held  it  out. 
The  master  struck  at  it  with  his  black  ruler,  with 
a  will  in  the  blow  and  a  snapping  of  the  eyes,  as 
much  as  to  say  that  he  meant  to  make  him  smart 
this  time.  The  young  fellow  pulled  his  hand 
back  as  the  ruler  came  down,  and  the  master  hit 
himself  a  vicious  blow  with  it  on  the  right  knee. 
There  are  things  no  man  can  stand.  The  master 
caught  the  refractory  youth  by  the  collar  and 
began  shaking  him,  or  rather  shaking  himself 
against  him. 

"  Le'  go  o'  that  are  coat,  naow,"  said  the  fellow, 
"  or  I  '11  make  ye  !  'T  '11  take  tew  on  ye  t'  handle 
me,  I  tell  ye,  'n'  then  ye  caant  dew  it ! "  —  and  the 
young  pupil  returned  the  master's  attention  by 
catching  hold  of  his  collar. 

When  it  comes  to  that,  the  best  man,  not  ex 
actly  in  the  moral  sense,  but  rather  in  the  mate 
rial,  and  more  especially  the  muscular  point  of 
view,  is  very  apt  to  have  the  best  of  it,  irrespec 
tively  of  the  merits  of  the  case.  So  it  happened 
now.  The  unfortunate  schoolmaster  found  him 
self  taking  the  measure  of  the  sanded  floor,  amidst 
the  general  uproar  of  the  school.  From  that  mo 
ment  his  ferule  was  broken,  and  the  school-com 
mittee  very  soon  had  a  vacancy  to  fill. 

Master  Pigeon,  the  successor  of  Master  Weeks, 
was  of  better  stature,  but  loosely  put  together, 


42  ELSIE  VENNER. 

and  slender-limbed.  A  dreadfully  nervous  kind 
of  man  he  was,  walked  on  tiptoe,  started  at  sud 
den  noises,  was  distressed  when  he  heard  a  whis 
per,  had  a  quick,  suspicious  look,  and  was  always 
saying,  "  Hush !  "  and  putting  his  hands  to  his 
ears.  The  boys  were  not  long  in  finding  out 
this  nervous  weakness,  of  course.  In  less  than 
a  week  a  regular  system  of  torments  was  in 
augurated,  full  of  the  most  diabolical  malice  and 
ingenuity.  The  exercises  of  the  conspirators 
varied  from  day  to  day,  but  consisted  mainly  of 
foot-scraping,  solos  on  the  slate-pencil,  (making  it 
screech  on  the  slate,)  falling  of  heavy  books,  at 
tacks  of  coughing,  banging  of  desk-lids,  boot- 
creaking,  with  sounds  as  of  drawing  a  cork  from 
time  to  time,  followed  by  suppressed  chuckles. 

Master  Pigeon  grew  worse  and  worse  under 
these  inflictions.  The  rascally  boys  always  had 
an  excuse  for  any  one  trick  they  were  caught  at. 
«  Couldn'  help  coughin',  Sir."  «  Slipped  out  o' 
m'  ban',  Sir."  "  Didn'  go  to,  Sir."  "  Didn'  dew  't 
o'  purpose,  Sir."  And  so  on,  —  always  the  best 
of  reasons  for  the  most  outrageous  of  behavior. 
The  master  weighed  himself  at  the  grocer's  on  a 
platform  balance,  some  ten  days  after  he  began 
keeping  the  school.  At  the  end  of  a  week  he 
weighed  himself  again.  He  had  lost  two  pounds. 
At  the  end  of  another  week  he  had  lost  five.  He 
made  a  little  calculation,  based  on  these  data, 
from  which  he  learned  that  in  a  certain  number 
of  months,  going  on  at  this  rate,  he  should  come 


ELSIE  VENNER.  43 

to  weigh  precisely  nothing  at  all ;  and  as  this 
was  a  sum  in  subtraction  he  did  not  care  to 
work  out  in  practice,  Master  Pigeon  took  to  him 
self  wings  and  left  the  school-committee  in  pos 
session  of  a  letter  of  resignation  and  a  vacant 
place  to  fill  once  more. 

This  was  the  school  to  which  Mr.  Bernard 
Langdon  found  himself  appointed  as  master. 
He  accepted  the  place  conditionally,  with  the 
understanding  that  he  should  leave  it  at  the  end 
of  a  month,  if  he  were  tired  of  it. 

The  advent  of  Master  Langdon  to  Pigwacket 
Centre  created  a  much  more  lively  sensation  than 
had  attended  that  of  either  of  his  predecessors. 
Looks  go  a  good  way  all  the  world  over,  and 
though  there  were  several  good-looking  people 
in  the  place,  and  Major  Bush  was  what  the  na 
tives  of  the  town  called  a  "  hahnsome  mahn," 
that  is,  big,  fat,  and  red,  yet  the  sight  of  a  really 
elegant  young  fellow,  with  the  natural  air  which 
grows  up  with  carefully-bred  young  persons,  was 
a  novelty.  The  Brahmin  blood  which  came  from 
his  grandfather  as  well  as  from  his  mother,  a  di 
rect  descendant  of  the  old  Flynt  family,  well 
known  by  the  famous  tutor,  Henry  Flynt,  (see 
Cat.  Harv.  Anno  1693,)  had  been  enlivened  and 
enriched  by  that  of  the  Wentworths,  which  had 
had  a  good  deal  of  ripe  old  Madeira  and  other 
generous  elements  mingled  with  it,  so  that  it  ran 
to  gout  sometimes  in  the  old  folks,  and  to  high 
spirit,  warm  complexion,  and  curly  hair  in  some 


44  ELSIE  VENNEK. 

of  the  younger  ones.  The  soft  curling  hair  Mr. 
Bernard  had  inherited,  —  something,  perhaps,  of 
the  high  spirit ;  but  that  we  shall  have  a  chance 
of  finding  out  by-and-by.  But  the  long  sermons 
and  the  frugal  board  of  his  Brahmin  ancestry, 
with  his  own  habits  of  study,  had  told  upon  his 
color,  which  was  subdued  to  something  more  of 
delicacy  than  one  would  care  to  see  in  a  young 
fellow  with  rough  work  before  him.  This,  how 
ever,  made  him  look  more  interesting,  or,  as  the 
young  ladies  at  Major  Bush's  said,  "  intere"stin'." 

When  Mr.  Bernard  showed  himself  at  meet 
ing,  on  the  first  Sunday  after  his  arrival,  it  may 
be  supposed  that  a  good  many  eyes  were  turned 
upon  the  young  schoolmaster.  There  was  some 
thing  heroic  in  his  coming  forward  so  readily  to 
take  a  place  which  called  for  a  strong  hand,  and 
a  prompt,  steady  will  to  guide  it.  In  fact,  his 
position  was  that  of  a  military  chieftain  on  the 
eve  of  a  battle.  Everybody  knew  everything  in 
Pigwacket  Centre ;  and  it  was  an  understood 
thing  that  the  young  rebels  meant  to  put  down 
the  new  master,  if  they  could.  It  was  natural 
that  the  two  prettiest  girls  in  the  village,  called 
in  the  local  dialect,  as  nearly  as  our  limited  al 
phabet  will  represent  it,  Alminy  Cutterr,  and  Ar- 
villy  Braowne,  should  feel  and  express  an  interest 
in  the  good-looking  stranger,  and  that,  when  their 
flattering  comments  were  repeated  in  the  hear 
ing  of  their  indigenous  admirers,  among  whom 
were  some  of  the  older  "boys"  of  the  school,  it 


ELSIE  VENKER.  45 

should  not  add  to  the  amiable  dispositions  of  the 
turbulent  youth. 

Monday  came,  and  the  new  schoolmaster  was 
in  his  chair  at  the  upper  end  of  the  schoolhouse, 
on  the  raised  platform.  The  rustics  looked  at 
his  handsome  face,  thoughtful,  peaceful,  pleas 
ant,  cheerful,  but  sharply  cut  round  the  lips  and 
proudly  lighted  about  the  eyes.  The  ringleader 
of  the  mischief-makers,  the  young  butcher  who 
has  before  figured  in  this  narrative,  looked  at  him 
stealthily,  whenever  he  got  a  chance  to  study 
him  unobserved  ;  for  the  truth  was,  he  felt  uncom 
fortable,  whenever  he  found  the  large,  dark  eyes 
fixed  on  his  own  little,  sharp,  deep-set,  gray  ones. 
But  he  managed  to  study  him  pretty  well,  —  first 
his  face,  then  his  neck  and  shoulders,  the  set  of 
his  arms,  the  narrowing  at  the  loins,  the  make  of 
his  legs,  and  the  way  he  moved.  In  short,  he  ex 
amined  him  as  he  would  have  examined  a  steer, 
to  see  what  he  could  do  and  how  he  would  cut 
up.  If  he  could  only  have  gone  to  him  and  felt 
of  his  muscles,  he  would  have  been  entirely  satis 
fied.  He  was  not  a  very  wise  youth,  but  he  did 
know  well  enough,  that,  though  big  arms  and 
legs  are  very  good  things,  there  is  something  be 
sides  size  that  goes  to  make  a  man  ;  and  he  had 
heard  stories  of  a  fighting-man,  called  "  The 
Spider,"  from  his  attenuated  proportions,  who 
was  yet  a  terrible  hitter  in  the  ring,  and  had 
whipped  many  a  big-limbed  fellow,  in  and  out  of 
the  roped  arena. 


46  ELSIE  VENNER. 

Nothing  could  be  smoother  than  the  way  in 
which  everything  went  on  for  the  first  day  or 
two.  The  new  master  was  so  kind  and  cour 
teous,  he  seemed  to  take  everything  in  such  a 
natural,  easy  way,  that  there  was  no  chance  to 
pick  a  quarrel  with  him.  He  in  the  mean  time 
thought  it  best  to  watch  the  boys  and  young  men 
for  a  day  or  two  with  as  little  show  of  authority 
as  possible.  It  was  easy  enough  to  see  that  he 
would  have  occasion  for  it  before  long. 

The  schoolhouse  was  a  grim,  old,  red,  one- 
story  building,  perched  on  a  bare  rock  at  the  top 
of  a  Mil,  —  partly  because  this  was  a  conspic 
uous  site  for  the  temple  of  learning,  and  partly 
because  land  is  cheap  where  there  is  no  chance 
even  for  rye  or  buckwheat,  and  the  very  sheep 
find  nothing  to  nibble.  About  the  little  porch 
were  carved  initials  and  dates,  at  various  heights, 
from  the  stature  of  nine  to  that  of  eighteen.  In 
side  were  old  unpainted  desks,  —  unpainted,  but 
browned  with  the  umber  of  human  contact,  — 
and  hacked  by  innumerable  jack-knives.  It  was 
long  since  the  walls  had  been  whitewashed,  as 
might  be  conjectured  by  the  various  traces  left 
upon  them,  wherever  idle  hands  or  sleepy  heads 
could  reach  them.  A  curious  appearance  was 
noticeable  on  various  higher  parts  of  the  wall, 
namely,  a  wart-like  eruption,  as  one  would  be 
tempted  to  call  it,  being  in  reality  a  crop  of  the 
soft  missiles  before  mentioned,  wtrich,  adhering  in 
considerable  numbers,  and  hardening  after  the 


ELSIE  VENNER.  47 

usual  fashion  of  papier  mach£,  formed  at  last  per 
manent  ornaments  of  the  edifice. 

The  young  master's  quick  eye  soon  noticed 
that  a  particular  part  of  the  wall  was  most  fa 
vored  with  these  ornamental  appendages.  Their 
position  pointed  sufficiently  clearly  to  the  part  of 
the  room  they  came  from.  In  fact,  there  was  a 
nest  of  young  mutineers  just  there,  which  must 
be  broken  up  by  a  coup  d'etat.  This  was  easily 
effected  by  redistributing  the  seats  and  arranging 
the  scholars  according  to  classes,  so  that  a  mis 
chievous  fellow,  charged  full  of  the  rebellious 
imponderable,  should  find  himself  between  two 
non-conductors,  in  the  shape  of  small  boys  of 
studious  habits.  It  was  managed  quietly  enough, 
in  such  a  plausible  sort  of  way  that  its  motive 
was  not  thought  of.  But  its  effects  were  soon 
felt ;  and  then  began  a  system  of  correspondence 
by  signs,  and  the  throwing  of  little  scrawls  done 
up  in  pellets,  and  announced  by  preliminary 
a'h'ms  !  to  call  the  attention  of  the  distant  youth 
addressed.  Some  of  these  were  incendiary  doc 
uments,  devoting  the  schoolmaster  to  the  lower 

divinities,  as  "  a stuck-up  dandy,"  as  "  a 

purse-proud  aristocrat,"  as  "  a sight  too  big 

for  his,  etc.,"  and  holding  him  up  in  a  variety  of 
equally  forcible  phrases  to  the  indignation  of  the 
youthful  community  of  School  District  No.  1, 
Pigwacket  Centre. 

Presently  the  draughtsman  of  the  school  set 
a  caricature  in  circulation,  labelled,  to  prevent 


48  ELSIE  VENNER 

mistakes,  with  the  schoolmaster's  name.  An 
immense  bell-crowned  hat,  and  a  long,  pointed, 
swallow-tailed  coat  showed  that  the  artist  had 
in  his  mind  the  conventional  dandy,  as  shown  in 
prints  of  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  rather  than 
any  actual  human  aspect  of  the  time.  But  it 
was  passed  round  among  the  boys  and  made  its 
laugh,  helping  of  course  to  undermine  the  mas-' 
ter's  authority,  as  "  Punch  "  or  the  "  Charivari  " 
takes  the  dignity  out  of  an  obnoxious  minister. 
One  morning,  on  going  to  the  schoolroom,  Mas 
ter  Langdon  found  an  enlarged  copy  of  this 
sketch,  with  its  label,  pinned  on  the  door.  He 
took  it  down,  smiled  a  little,  put  it  into  his 
pocket,  and  entered  the  schoolroom.  An  insid 
ious  silence  prevailed,  which  looked  as  if  some 
plot  were  brewing.  The  boys  were  ripe  for  mis 
chief,  but  afraid.  They  had  really  no  fault  to 
find  with  the  master,  except  that  he  was  dressed 
like  a  gentleman,  which  a  certain  class  of  fellows 
always  consider  a  personal  insult  to  themselves. 
But  the  older  ones  were  evidently  plotting,  and 
more  than  once  the  warning  a! Km,  I  was  heard, 
and  a  dirty  little  scrap  of  paper  rolled  into  a  wad 
shot  from  one  seat  to  another.  One  of  these 
happened  to  strike  the  stove-funnel,  and  lodged 
on  the  master's  desk.  He  was  cool  enough  not 
to  seem  to  notice  it.  He  secured  it,  however, 
and  found  an  opportunity  to  look  at  it,  without 
being  observed  by  the  boys.  It  required  no  im 
mediate  notice. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  49 

He  who  should  have  enjoyed  the  privilege  of 
looking  upon  Mr.  Bernard  Langdon  the  next 
morning,  when  his  toilet  was  about  half  finished, 
would  have  had  a  very  pleasant  gratuitous  exhi 
bition.  First  he  buckled  the  strap  of  his  trousers 
pretty  tightly.  Then  he  took  up  a  pair  of  heavy 
dumb-bells,  and  swung  them  for  a  few  minutes ; 
then  two-  great  "  Indian  clubs,"  with  which  he  en 
acted  all  sorts  of  impossible-looking  feats.  His 
limbs  were  not  very  large,  nor  his  shoulders  re 
markably  broad ;  but  if  you  knew  as  much  of 
the  muscles  as  all  persons  who  look  at  statues 
and  pictures  with  a  critical  eye  ought  to  have 
learned,  —  if  you  knew  the  trapezius,  lying  dia 
mond-shaped  over  the  back  and  shoulders  like 
a  monk's  cowl,  —  or  the  deltoid,  which  caps  the 
shoulder  like  an  epaulette,  —  or  the  triceps,  which 
furnishes  the  calf  oi  the  upper  arm,  —  or  the  hard- 
knotted  biceps,  —  any  of  the  great  sculptural  land 
marks,  in  fact,  —  you  would  have  said  there  was 
a  pretty  show  of  them,  beneath  the  white  satiny 
skin  of  Mr.  Bernard  Langdon.  And  if  you  had 
seen  him,  when  he  had  laid  down  the  Indian 
clubs,  catch  hold  of  a  leather  strap  that  hung 
from  the  beam  of  the  old-fashioned  ceiling,  and 
lift  and  lower  himself  over  and  over  again  by  his 
left  hand  alone,  you  might  have  thought  it  a  very 
simple  and  easy  thing  to  do,  until  you  tried  to  do 
it  yourself.  —  Mr.  Bernard  looked  at  himself  with 
the  eye  of  an  expert.  "  Pretty  well !  "  he  said ; 
—  "  not  so  much  fallen  off  as  I  expected."  Then 


50  ELSIE  TENNER. 

he  set  up  his  bolster  in  a  very  knowing  sort  of 
way,  and  delivered  two  or  three  blows  straight 
as  rulers  and  swift  as  winks.  "  That  will  do," 
he  said.  Then,  as  if  determined  to  make  a  cer 
tainty  of  his  condition,  he  took  a  dynamometer 
from  one  of  the  drawers  in  his  old  veneered 
bureau.  First  he  squeezed  it  with  his  two  hands. 
Then  he  placed  it  on  the  floor  and  lifted,  steadily, 
strongly.  The  springs  creaked  and  cracked  ;  the 
index  swept  with  a  great  stride  far  up  into  the 
high  figures  of  the  scale ;  it  was  a  good  lift. 
He  was  satisfied.  He  sat  down  on  the  edge  of 
his  bed  and  looked  at  his  cleanly-shaped  arms. 
"  If  I  strike  one  of  those  boobies,  I  am  afraid  I 
shall  spoil  him,"  he  said.  Yet  this  young  man, 
when  weighed  with  his  cla'ss  at  the  college, 
could  barely  turn  one  hundred  and  forty-two 
pounds  in  the  scale,  —  not  a  heavy  weight, 
surely;  but  some  of  the  middle  weights,  as  the 
present  English  champion,  for  instance,  seem  to 
be  of  a  far  finer  quality  of  muscle  than  the  bulk 
ier  fellows. 

The  master  took  his  breakfast  with  a  good 
appetite  that  morning,  but  was  perhaps  rather 
more  quiet  than  usual.  After  breakfast  he  went 
up-stairs  and  put  on  a  light  loose  frock,  instead 
of  his  usual  dress-coat,  which  was  a  close-fitting 
and  rather  stylish  one.  On  his  way  to  school 
he  met  Alminy  Cutterr,  who  happened  to  be 
walking  in  the  other  direction.  "  Good  morn 
ing,  Miss  Cutter,"  he  said ;  for  she  and  another 


ELSIE  VENNER.  51 

young  lady  had  been  introduced  to  him,  on  a 
former  occasion,  in  the  usual  phrase  of  polite  so 
ciety  in  presenting  ladies  to  gentlemen,  —  "Mr. 
Langdon,  let  me  make  y'  acquainted  with  Miss 
Cutterr; —  let  me  make  y'  acquainted  with  Miss 
Braowne."  So  he  said,  "  Good  morning " ;  to 
which  she  replied,  ".Good  morn  in',  Mr.  Lang 
don.  Haow's  your  haalth  ? "  The  answer  to 
this  question  ought  naturally  to  have  been  the 
end  of  the  talk ;  but  Alminy  Cutterr  lingered 
and  looked  as  if  she  had  something  more  on 
her  mind. 

A  young  fellow  does  not  require  a  great  ex 
perience  to  read  a  simple  country-girl's  face  as 
if  it  were  a  signboard.  Alminy  was  a  good  soul, 
with  red  cheeks  and  bright  eyes,  kind-hearted  as 
she  could  be,  and  it  was  out  of  the  question  for 
her  to  hide  her  thoughts  or  feelings  like  a  fine 
lady.  Her  bright  eyes  were  moist  and  her  red 
cheeks  paler  than  their  wont,  as  she  said,  with 
her  lips  quivering,  — "  Oh,  Mr.  Langdon,  them 
boys  '11  be  the  death  of  ye,  if  ye  don't  take 
caar ! " 

"  Why,  what's  the  matter,  my  dear  ?  "  said  Mr. 
Bernard.  —  Don't  think  there  was  anything  very 
odd  in  that  "  my  dear,"  at  the  second  interview 
with  a  village  belle ;  —  some  of  these  woman- 
tamers  call  a  girl  "  My  dear,"  after  five  minutes' 
acquaintance,  and  it  sounds  all  right  as  they  say 
it.  But  you  had  better  not  try  it  at  a  venture. 

It  sounded  all  right  to  Alminy,  as  Mr.  Bernard 


52  ELSIE  VENNER. 

said  it.  —  "I  '11  tell  ye  what's  the  mahtterr,"  she 
said,  in  a  frightened  voice.  "  Ahbner's  go'n'  to 
car'  his  dog,  V  he  '11  set  him  on  ye  'z  sure  'z  y'  V 
alive.  'T  's  the  same  cretur  that  haaf  eat  up 
Eben  Squires's  little  Jo,  a  year  come  nex'  Faiist- 
day." 

Now  this  last  statement  was  undoubtedly  over- 
colored  ;  as  little  Jo  Squires  was  running  about 
the  village,  —  with  an  ugly  scar  on  his  arm,  it  is 
true,  where  the  beast  had  caught  him  with  his 
teeth,  on  the  occasion  of  the  child's  taking  liber 
ties  with  him,  as  he  had  been  accustomed  to  do 
with  a  good-tempered  Newfoundland  dog,  who 
seemed  to  like  being  pulled  and  hauled  round  by 
children.  After  this  the  creature  was  commonly 
muzzled,  and,  as  he  was  fed  on  raw  meat  chiefly, 
was  always  ready  for  a  fight, — which  he  was 
occasionally  indulged  in,  when  anything  stout 
enough  to  match  him  could  be  found  in  any  of 
the  neighboring  villages. 

Tiger,  or,  more  briefly,  Tige,  the  property  of 
Abner  Briggs,  Junior,  belonged  to  a  species  not 
distinctly  named  in  scientific  books,  but  well 
known  to  our  country-folks  under  the  name 
"  Yallah  dog."  They  do  not  use  this  expres 
sion  as  they  would  say  black  dog  or  white  dog, 
but  with  almost  as  definite  a  meaning  as  when 
they  speak  of  a  terrier  or  a  spaniel.  A  "  yallah 
dog,"  is  a  large  canine  brute,  of  a  dingy  old- 
flannel  color,  of  no  particular  breed  except  his 
own,  who  hangs  round  a  tavern  or  a  butcher's 


ELSIE  VENNER.  53 

shop,  or  trots  alongside  of  a  team,  looking  as  if 
he  were  disgusted  with  the  world,  and  the  world 
with  him.  Our  inland  population,  while  they 
tolerate  him,  speak  of  him  with  contempt.  Old 

,  of  Meredith  Bridge,  used  to  twit  the  sun 

for  not  shining  on  cloudy  days,  swearing,  that, 
if  he  hung  up  his  "  yallah  dog,"  he  would  make 
a  better  show  of  daylight.  A  country  fellow, 
abusing  a  horse  of  his  neighbor's,  vowed,  that, 
"  if  he  had  such  a  boss,  he'd  swap  him  for  a 
'  yallah  dog,'  —  and  then  shoot  the  dog." 

Tige  was  an  ill-conditioned  brute  by  nature, 
and  art  had  not  improved  him  by  cropping  his 
ears  and  tail  and  investing  him  with  a  spiked 
collar.  He  bore  on  his  person,  also,  various  not 
ornamental  scars,  marks  of  old  battles  ;  for  Tige 
had  fight  in  him,  as  was  said  before,  and  as  might 
be  guessed  by  a  certain  bluntness  about  the  muz 
zle,  with  a  projection  of  the  lower  jaw,  which 
looked  as  if  there  might  be  a  bull-dog  stripe 
among  the  numerous  bar-sinisters  of  his  lineage. 

It  was  hardly  •  fair,  however,  to  leave  Alminy 
Cutterr  waiting  while  this  piece  of  natural  his 
tory  was  telling.  —  As  she  spoke  of  little  Jo,  who 
had  been  "  haaf  eat  up  "  by  Tige,  she  could  not 
contain  her  sympathies,  and  began  to  cry. 

"  Why,  my  dear  little  soul,"  said  Mr.  Bernard, 
"  what  are  you  worried  about  ?  J  used  to  play 
with  a  bear  when  I  was  a  boy  ;  and  the  bear 

used  to  hug  me,  and  I  used  to  kiss  him, 

so!" 


54  ELSIE  VENXER. 

It  was  too  bad  of  Mr.  Bernard,  only  the  second 
time  he  had  seen  Alminy;  but  her  kind  feelings 
had  touched  him,  and  that  seemed  the  most  nat 
ural  way  of  expressing  his  gratitude.  Alminy 
looked  round  to  see  if  anybody  was  near ;  she 
saw  nobody,  so  of  ..course  it  would  do  no  good 
to  "  holler."  She  saw  nobody ;  but  a  stout  young 
fellow,  leading  a  yellow  dog,  muzzled,  saw  her 
through  a  crack  in  a  picket  fence,  not  a  great 
way  off  the  road.  Many  a  year  he  had  been 
"  hangin'  'raoun'  "  Alminy,  and  never  did  he  see 
any  encouraging  look,  or  hear  any  "  Behave, 
naow ! "  or  "  Come,  naow,  a'n't  ye  'shamed  ? " 
or  other  forbidding  phrase  of  acquiescence,  such 
as  village  belles  understand  as  well  as  ever  did 
the  nymph  who  fled  to  the  willows  in  the  eclogue 
we  all  remember. 

No  wonder  he  was  furious,  when  he  saw  the 
schoolmaster,  who  had  never  seen  the  girl  until 
within  a  week,  touching  with  his  lips  those  rosy 
cheeks  which  he  had  never  dared  to  approach. 
But  that  was  all ;  it  was  a  sudden  impulse ;  and 
the  master  turned  away  from  the  young  girl, 
laughing,  and  telling  her  not  to  fret  herself  about 
him,  —  he  would  take  care  of  himself. 

So  Master  Langdon  walked  on  toward  his 
schoolhouse,  not  displeased,  perhaps,  with  his  lit 
tle  adventure,  nor  immensely  elated  by  it ;  for  he 
was  one  of  the  natural  class  of  the  sex-subduers, 
and  had  had  many  a  smile  without  asking,  which 
had  been  denied  to  the  feeble  youth  who  try  to 


ELSIE  VENNER.  55 

win  favor  by  pleading  their  passion  in  rhyme,  and 
even  to  the  more  formidable  approaches  of  young 
officers  in  volunteer  companies,  considered  by 
many  to  be  quite  irresistible  to  the  fair  who 
have  once  beheld  them  from  their  windows  in  the 
epaulettes  and  plumes  and  sashes  of  the  "  Pig- 
wacket  Invincibles,"  or  the  "  Hackmatack  Ran 
gers." 

Master  Langdon  took  his  seat  and  began  the 
exercises  of  his  school.  The  smaller  boys  recited 
their  lessons  well  enough,  but  some  of  the  larger 
ones  were  negligent  and  surly.  He  noticed  one 
or  two  of  them  looking  toward  the  door,  as  if  ex 
pecting  somebody  or  something  in  that  direction. 
At  half  past  nine  o'clock,  Abner  Briggs,  Junior, 
who  had  not  yet  shown  himself,  made  his  appear 
ance.  He  was  followed  by  his  "  yallah  dog," 
without  his  muzzle,  who  squatted  down  very 
grimly  near  the  door,  and  gave  a  wolfish  look 
round  the  room,  as  if  he  were  considering  which 
was  the  plumpest  boy  to  begin  with.  The  young 
butcher,  meanwhile,  went  to  his  seat,  looking 
somewhat  flushed,  except  round  the  lips,  which 
were  hardly  as  red  as  common,  and  set  pretty 
sharply. 

"Put  out  that  dog,  Abner  Briggs !"  — The 
master  spoke  as  the  captain  speaks  to  the  helms 
man,  when  there  are  rocks  foaming  at  the  lips, 
right  under  his  lee. 

Abner  Briggs  answered  as  the  helmsman  an 
swers,  when  he  knows  he  has  a  mutinous  crew 


56  ELSIK   VEXXER. 

round  him  that  mean  to  run  the  ship  on  the  reef, 
and  is  one  of  the  mutineers  himself.  "  Put  him 
aout  y'rself,  'f  ye  a'n't  afeard  on  him !  " 

The  master  stepped  into  the  aisle.  The  great 
cur  showed  his  teeth,  —  and  the  devilish  instincts 
of  his  old  wolf-ancestry  looked  out  of  his  eyes, 
and  flashed  from  his  sharp  tusks,  and  yawned  in 
his  wide  mouth  and  deep  red  gullet. 

The  movements  of  animals  are  so  much  quicker 
than  those  of  human  beings  commonly  are,  that 
they  avoid  blows  as  easily  as  one  of  us  steps  out 
of  the  way  of  an  ox-cart.  It  must  be  a  very  stu 
pid  dog  that  lets  himself  be  run  over  by  a  fast 
driver  in  his  gig ;  he  can  jump  out  of  the  wheel's 
way  after  the  tire  has  already  touched  him.  So, 
while  one  is  lifting  a  stick  to  strike  or  drawing 
back  his  foot  to  kick,  the  beast  makes  his  spring, 
and  the  blow  or  the  kick  comes  too  late. 

It  was  not  so  this  time.  The  master  was  a 
fencer,  and  something  of  a  boxer  ;  he  had  played 
at  single-stick,  and  was  used  to  watching  an  ad 
versary's  eye  and  coming  down  on  him  without 
any  of  those  premonitory  symptoms  by  which 
unpractised  persons  show  long  beforehand  what 
mischief  they  meditate. 

"Out  with  you!"  he  said,  fiercely,  —  and  ex 
plained  what  Ire  meant  by  a  sudden  fla.-h  of  his 
foot  that  clashed  the  yellow  dog's  white  teeth  to 
gether  like  the  springing  of  a  bear-trap.  The  cur 
knew  he  had  found  his  master  at  the  first  word 
and  glance,  as  low  animals  on  four  legs,  or  a 


ELSIE  VEXXER.  57 

smaller  number,  always  do ;  and  the  blow  took 
him  so  by  surprise,  that  it  curled  him  up  in  an 
instant,  and  he  went  bundling  out  of  the  open 
schoolhouse-door  with  a  most  pitiable  yelp,  and 
his  stump  of  a  tail  shut  down  as  close  as  his 
owner  ever  shut  the  short,  stubbed  blade  of  his 
jack-knife. 

It  was  time  for  the  other  cur  to  find  who  his 
master  was. 

"  Follow  your  dog,  Abner  Briggs ! "  said  Mas 
ter  Langdon. 

The  stout  butcher-youth  looked  round,  but  the 
rebels  were  all  cowed  and  sat  still. 

"I'll  go  when  I'm  ready,"  he  said,  —  "'n'  I 
guess  I  won't  go  afore  I'm  ready." 

"  You're  ready  now,"  said  Master  Langdon, 
turning  up  his  cuffs  so  that  the  little  boys  noticed 
the  yellow  gleam  of  a  pair  of  gold  sleeve-buttons, 
once  worn  by  Colonel  Percy  Weritworth,  famous 
in  the  Old  French  War. 

Abner  Briggs,  Junior,  did  not  apparently  think 
he  was  ready,  at  any  rate ;  for  he  rose  up  in  his 
place,  and  stood  with  clenched  fists,  defiant,  as 
the  master  strode  towards  him.  The  master 
knew  the  fellow  was  really  frightened,  for  all  his 
looks,  and  that  he  must  have  no  time  to  rally. 
So  he  caught  him  suddenly  by  the  collar,  and, 
with  one  great  pull,  had  him  out  over  his  desk 
and  on  the  open  floor.  He  gave  him  a  sharp 
fling  backwards  and  stood  looking  at  him. 

The   rough-and-tumble   fighters   all   clinch,   as 


58  KLSIE    VKXXER. 

everybody  knows ;  and  Abner  Briggs,  Junior,  was 
one  of  that  kind.  He  remembered  how  he  had 
floored  Master  Weeks,  and  he  had  just  "  spunk  " 
enough  left  in  him  to  try  to  repeat  his  former 
successful  experiment  on  the  new  master.  He 
sprang  at  him,  open-handed,  to  clutch  him.  So 
the  master  had  to  strike,  —  once,  but  very  hard, 
and  just  in  the  place  to  tell.  No  doubt,  the  au 
thority  that  doth  hedge  a  schoolmaster  added  to 
the  effect  of  the  blow ;  but  the  blow  was  itself  a 
neat  one,  and  did  not  require  to  be  repeated. 

"  Now  go  home,"  said  the  master,  "  and  don't 
let  me  see  you  or  your  dog  here  again."  And  he 
turned  his  cuffs  down  over  the  gold  sleeve-but 
tons. 

This  finished  the  great.  Pigwacket  Centre  School 
rebellion.  What  could  be  done  with  a  master 
who  was  so  pleasant  as  long  as  the  boys  behaved 
decently,  and  such  a  terrible  fellow  when  he  got 
"  riled,"  as  they  called  it  ?  In  a  week's  time, 
everything  was  reduced  to  order,  and  the  school- 
committee  were  delighted.  The  master,  however, 
had  received  a  proposition  so  much  more  agreea 
ble  and  advantageous,  that  he  informed  the  com 
mittee  he  should  leave  at  the  end  of  his  month, 
having  in  his  eye  a  sensible  and  energetic  young 
college-graduate  who  would  be  willing  and  fully 
competent  to  take  his  place. 

So,  at  the  expiration  of  the  appointed  time, 
Bernard  Langdon,  late  master  of  the  School  Dis 
trict  No.  1,  Pigwacket  Centre,  took  his  departure 


ELSIE  VENNER.  59 

from  that  place  for  another  locality,  whither  we 
shall  follow  him,  carrying  with  him  the  regrets 
of  the  committee,  of  most  of  the  scholars,  and 
of  several  young  ladies  ;  also  two  locks  of  hair, 
sent  unbeknown  to  payrents,  one  dark  and  one 
warmish  auburn,  inscribed  with  the  respective  in 
itials  of  Alminy  Cutterr  and  Arvilly  Braowne. 


60  ELSIE   VEXNER. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    MOTH    FLIES    IXTO    THE    CAXDLE. 

THE  invitation  which  Mr.  Bernard  Langdon 
had  accepted  came  from  the  Board  of  Trustees 
of  the  "  Apollinean  Female  Institute,"  a  school 
for  the  education  of  young  ladies,  situated  in  the 
nourishing  town  of  Rockland.  This  was  an  es 
tablishment  on  a  considerable  scale,  in  which  a 
hundred  scholars  or  thereabouts  were  taught  the 
ordinary  English  branches,  several  of  the  modern 
languages,  something  of  Latin,  if  desired,  with  a 
little  natural  philosophy,  metaphysics,  and  rheto 
ric,  to  finish  off  with  in  the  last  year,  and  music 
at  any  time  when  they  would  pay  for  it.  At  the 
close  of  their  career  in  the  Institute,  they  were 
submitted  to  a  grand  public  examination,  and  re 
ceived  diplomas  tied  in  blue  ribbons,  which  pro 
claimed  them  with  a  great  nourish  of  capitals  to 
be  graduates  of  the  Apollinean  Female  Institute. 

Rockland  was  a  town  of  no  inconsiderable  pre 
tensions.  It  was  ennobled  by  lying  at  the  foot 
of  a  mountain,  —  called  by  the  working-folks  of 
the  place  "  the  Maounting," — which  sufficiently 
showed  that  it  was  the  principal  high  land  of  the 


ELSIE   VENNER.  61 

district  in  which  it  was  situated.  It  lay  to  the 
south  of  this,  and  basked  in  the  sunshine  as  Italy 
stretches  herself  before  the  Alps.  To  pass  from 
the  town  of  Tamarack  on  the  north  of  the  moun 
tain  to  Rockland  on  the  south  was  like  crossing 
from  Coire  to  Chiavenna. 

There  is  nothing  gives  glory  and  grandeur  and 
romance  and  mystery  to  a  place  like  the  impend 
ing  presence  of  a  high  mountain.  Our  beautiful 
Northampton  with  its  fair  meadows  and  noble 
stream  is  lovely  enough,  but  owes  its  surpassing 
attraction  to  those  twin  ^mmits  which  brood 
over  it  like  living  presences,  looking  down  into  its 
streets  as  if  they  were  its  tutelary  divinities,  dress 
ing  and  undressing  their  green  shrines,  robing 
themselves  in  jubilant  sunshine  or  in  sorrowing 
clouds,  and  doing  penance  in  the  snowy  shroud 
of  winter,  as  if  they  had  living  hearts  under  their 
rocky  ribs  and  changed  their  mood  like  the  chil 
dren  of  the  soil  at  their  feet,  who  grow -up  under 
their  almost  parental  smiles  and  frowns.  Happy 
is  the  child  whose  first  dreams  of  heaven  are 
blended  with  the  evening  glories  of  Mount  Hoi- 
yoke,  when  the  sun  is  firing  its  treetops,  and  gild 
ing  the  white  walls  that  mark  its  one  human 
dwelling !  If  the  other  and  the  wilder  of  the 
two  summits  has  a  scowl  of  terror  in  its  over 
hanging  brows,  yet  is  it  a  pleasing  fear  to  look 
upon  its  savage  solitudes  through  the  barred 
nursery-windows  in  the  heart  of  the  sweet,  com 
panionable  village.  — 'And  how  the  mountains 


62  ELSIE  VENNER. 

love  their  children  !  The  sea  is  of  a  facile  virtue, 
and  will  run  to  kiss  the  first  comer  in  any  port  he 
visits  ;  but  the  chaste  mountains  sit  apart,  and 
show  their  faces  only  in  the  midst  of  their  own 
families. 

The  Mountain  which  kept  watch  to  the  north  of 
Rockland  lay  waste  and  almost  inviolate  through 
much  of  its  domain.  The  catamount  still  glared 
from  the  branches  of  its  old  hemlocks  on  the 
lesser  beasts  that  strayed  beneath  him.  It  was 
not  long  since  a  wolf  had  wandered  down,  fam 
ished  in  the  winter's  dearth,  and  left  a  few  bones 
and  some  tufts  of  wool  of  what  had  been  a  lamb 
in  the  morning.  Nay,  there  were  broad-footed 
tracks  in  the  snow  only  two  years  previously, 
which  could  not  be  mistaken ;  —  the  black  bear 
alone  could  have  set  that  plantigrade  seal,  and 
little  children  must  come  home  early  from  school 
and  play,  for  he  is  an  indiscriminate  feeder  when 
he  is  hungry,  and  a  little  child  would  not  come 
amiss  when  other  game  was  wanting. 

But  these  occasional  visitors  may  have  been 
mere  wanderers,  which,  straying  along  in  the 
woods  by  day,  and  perhaps  stalking  through  the 
streets  of  still  villages  by  night,  had  worked  their 
way  along  down  from  the  ragged  mountain-spurs 
of  higher  latitudes.  The  one  feature  of  The 
Mountain  that  shed  the  brownest  horror  on  its 
woods  was  the  existence  of  the  terrible  region 
known  as  Rattlesnake  Ledge,  and  still  tenanted 
by  those  damnable  reptiles,  which  distil  a  fiercer 


ELSIE   VENNER.  63 

venom  under  our  cold  northern  sky  than  the 
cobra  himself  in  the  land  of  tropical  spices  and 
poisons. 

From  the  earliest  settlement  of  the  place,  this, 
fact  had  been,  next  to  the  Indians,  the  reign 
ing  nightmare  of  the  inhabitants.  It  was  easy 
enough,  after  a  time,  to  drive  away  the  savages ; 
for  "  a  screeching  Indian  Divell,"  as  our  fathers 
called  him,  could  not  crawl  into  the  crack  of  a 
rock  to  escape  from  his  pursuers.  But  the  ven 
omous  population  of  Rattlesnake  Ledge  had  a 
Gibraltar  for  their  fortress  that  might  have  defied 
the  siege-train  dragged  to  the  walls  of  Sebasto- 
pol.  In  its  deep  embrasures  and  its  impregnable 
casemates  they  reared  their  families,  they  met  in 
love  or  wrath,  they  twined  together  in  family 
knots,  they  hissed  defiance  in  hostile  clans,  they 
fed,  slept,  hybernated,  and  in  due  time  died  in 
peace.  Many  a  foray  had  the  town's-people  made, 
and  many  a  stuffed  skin  was  shown  as  a  trophy, 
—  nay,  there  were  families  where  the  children's 
first  toy  was  made  from  the  warning  appendage 
that  once  vibrated  to  the  wrath  of  one  of  these 
"  cruel  serpents."  Sometimes  one  of  them,  coax 
ed  out  by  a  warm  sun,  would  writhe  himself 
down  the  hillside  into  the  roads,  up  the  walks 
that  led  to  houses,  —  worse,  than  this,  into  the 
long  grass,  where  the  bare-footed  mowers  would 
soon  pass  with  their  swinging  scythes,  —  more 
rarely  into  houses,  —  and  on  one  memorable  oc 
casion,  early  in  the  last  century,  into  the  meeting- 


64  ELSIE  VENNER. 

house,  where  he  took  a  position  on  the  pulpit- 
stairs, —  as  is  narrated  in  the  "  Account  of  Some 
Remarkable  Providences,"  etc.,  where  it  is  sug 
gested  that  a  strong  tendency  of  the  Rev.  Didy- 
nrms  Bean,  the  Minister  at  that  time,  towards  the 
Arminian  Heresy  may  have  had  something  to  do 
with  it,  and  that  the  Serpent  supposed  to  have 
been  killed  on  the  Pulpit-Stairs  was  a  false  show 
of  the  Daemon's  Contrivance,  he  having  come 
in  to  listen  to  a  Discourse  which  was  a  sweet 
Savour  in  his  Nostrils,  and,  of  course,  not  being 
capable  of  being  killed  Himself.  Others  said, 
however,  that,  though  there  was  good  Reason 
to  think  it  was  a  Daemon,  yet  he  did  come  with 
Intent  to  bite  the  Heel  of  that  faithful  Servant, 
—  etc. 

One  Gilson  is  said  to  have  died  of  the  bite  of 
a  rattlesnake  in  this  town  early  in  the  gresent 
century.  After  this  there  was  a  great  snake-hunt, 
in  which  very  many  of  these  venomous  beasts 
were  killed, — one  in  particular,  said  to  have  been 
as  big  round  as  a  stout  man's  arm,  and  to  have 
had  no  less  than  forty  joints  to  his  rattle,  —  in 
dicating,  according  to  some,  that  he  had  lived 
forty  years,  but,  if  we  might  put  any  faith  in 
the  Indian  tradition,  that  he  had  killed  forty 
human  beings, —  an  idle  fancy,  clearly.  This 
hunt,  however,  had  no  permanent  effect  in  keep 
ing  down  the  serpent  population.  Viviparous 
creatures  are  a  kind  of  specie-paying  lot,  but 
oviparous  ones  only  give  their  notes,  as  it  were, 


ELSIE  VENNER.  65 

for  a  future  brood,  —  an  egg  being,  so  to  speak, 
a  promise  to  pay  a  young  one  by-and-by,  if 
nothing  happen.  Now  the  domestic  habits 
of  the  rattlesnake  are  not  studied  very  closely, 
for  obvious  reasons ;  but  it  is,  no  doubt,  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  oviparous.  Conse 
quently  it  has  large-  families,  and  is  not  easy 
to  kill  out. 

In  the  year  184 — ,  a  melancholy  proof  was 
afforded  to  the  inhabitants  of  Rockland,  that  the 
brood  which  infested  The  Mountain  was  not 
extirpated.  A  very  interesting  young  married 
woman,  detained  at  home  at  the  time  by  the 
state  of  her  health,  was  bitten  in  the  entry  of 
her  own  house  by  a  rattlesnake  which  had  found 
its  way  down  from  The  Mountain.  Owing  to 
the  almost  instant  employment  of  powerful  rem- 
•edies,  the  bite  did  not  prove  immediately  fatal ; 
but  she  died  within  a  few  months  of  the  time 
when  she  was  bitten. 

All  this  seemed  to  throw  a  lurid  kind  of 
shadow  over  The  Mountain.  Yet,  as  many 
years  passed  without  any  accident,  people  grew 
comparatively  careless,  and  it  might  rather  be 
said  to  add  a  fearful  kind  of  interest  to  the  ro 
mantic  hillside,  that  the  banded  reptiles,  which 
had  been  the  terror  of  the  red  men  for  nobody 
knows  how  many  thousand  years,  were  there  still, 
with  the  same  poison-bags  and  spring-teefh  at 
the  white  men's  service,  if  they  meddled  with 
them. 


66  ELSIE  VENNER. 

The  other  natural  features  of  Rockland  were 
such  as  many  of  our  pleasant  country-towns  can 
boast  of.  A  brook  came  tumbling  down  the 
mountain-side  and  skirted  the  most  thickly  set 
tled  portion  of  the  village.  In  the  parts  of  its 
course  where  it  ran  through  the  woods,  the  water 
looked  almost  as  brown  as  coffee  flowing  from 
its  urn,  —  to  say  like  smoky  quartz  would  per 
haps  give  a  better  idea,  —  but  in  the  open  plain 
it  sparkled  over  the  pebbles  white  as  a  queen's 
diamonds.  There  were  huckleberry-pastures  on 
the  lower  flanks  of  The  Mountain,  with  plenty 
of  the  sweet-scented  bay  berry  mingled  with  the 
other  bushes.  In  other  fields  grew  great  store  of 
high-bush  blackberries.  Along  the  road-side  were 
barberry-bashes,  hung  all  over  with  bright  red 
coral  pendants  in  autumn  and  far  into  the  winter. 
Then  there  were  swamps  set  thick  with  dingy 
alders,  where  the  three-leaved  arum  and  the 
skunk's-cabbage  grew  broad  and  succulent,  — 
shelving  down  into  black  boggy  pools  here  and 
there,  at  the  edge  of  which  the  green  frog,  stupid 
est  of  his  tribe,  sat  waiting  to  be  victimized  by 
boy  or  snapping-turtle  long  after  the  shy  and 
agile  leopard-frog  had  taken  the  six-foot  spring 
that  plumped  him  into  the  middle  of  the  pool. 
And  on  the  neighboring  banks  the  maiden-hair 
spread  its  flat  disk  of  embroidered  fronds  on  the 
wiffe-like  stem  that  glistened  polished  and  brown 
as  the  darkest  tortoise-shell,  and  pale  violets, 
cheated  by  the  cold  skies  of  their  hues  and  per- 


ELSIE  TENNER.  67 

fame,  sunned  themselves  like  white-cheeked  in 
valids.  Over  these  rose  the  old  forest-trees, — 
the  maple,  scarred  with  the  wounds  which  had 
drained  away  its  sweet  life-blood,  —  the  beech,  its 
smooth  gray  bark  mottled  so  as  to  look  like  the 
body  of  one  of  those  great  snakes  of  old  that 
used  to  frighten  armies,  —  always  the  mark  of 
lovers'  knives,  as  in  the  days  of  Musidora  and  her 
swain,  —  the  yellow  birch,  rough  as  the  breast  of 
Silenus  in  old  marbles,  —  the  wild  cherry,  its  little 
bitter  fruit  lying  unheeded  at  its  foot,  —  and,  soar 
ing  over  all,  the  huge,  coarse-barked,  splintery- 
limbed,  dark -mantled  hemlock,  in  the  depth  of 
whose  aerial  solitudes  the  crow  brooded  on  her 
nest  unscared,  and  the  gray  squirrel  lived  un 
harmed  till  his  incisors  grew  to  look  like  ram's- 
horns. 

Rockland  would  have  been  but  half  a  town 
without  its  pond ;  Quinnepeg  Pond  was  the 
name  of  it,  but  the  young  ladies  of  the  Apol- 
linean  Institute  were  very  anxious  that  it  should 
be  called  Crystalline  Lake.  It  was  here  that  the 
young  folks  used  to  sail  in  summer  and  skate  in 
winter;  here,  too,  those  queer,  old,  rum-scented, 
good-for-nothing,  lazy,  story -telling,  half-vaga 
bonds,  who  sawed  a  little  wood  or  dug  a  few 
potatoes  now  and  then  under  the  pretence  of 
working  for  their  living,  used  to  go  and  fish 
through  the  ice  for  pickerel  every  winter.  And 
here  those  three  young  people  were  drowned,  a 
few  summers  ago,  by  the  upsetting  of  a  sail-boat 


68  ELSIE  VEXXER. 

in  a  sudden  flaw  of  wind.  There  is  not  one  of 
these  smiling  ponds  which  has  net  devoured  more 
youths  and  maidens  than  any  of  those  monsters 
the  ancients  used  to  tell  such  lies  about.  But 
it  was  a  pretty  pond,  and  never  looked  more  in 
nocent —  so  the  native  "  bard  "  of  Rockland  said 
in  his  elegy  —  than  on  the  morning  when  they 
found  Sarah  Jane  and  Ellen  Maria  floating 
among  the  lily-pads. 

The  Apollinean  Institute,  or  Institoot,  as  it 
was  more  commonly  called,  was,  in  the  language 
of  its  Prospectus,  a  "  first-class  Educational  Es 
tablishment."  It  employed  a  considerable  corps 
of  instructors  to  rough  out  and  finish  the  hundred 
young  lady  scholars  it  sheltered  beneath  its  roof. 
First,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Peckham,  the  Principal  and 
the  Matron  of  the  school.  Silas  Peckham  was 
a  thorough  Yankee,  born  on  a  windy  part  of  the 
coast,  and  reared  chiefly  on  salt-fish.  Everybody 
knows  the  type  of  Yankee  produced  by  this  cli 
mate  and  diet :  thin,  as  if  he  had  been  split  and 
dried ;  with  an  ashen  kind  of  complexion,  like 
the  tint  of  the  food  he  is  made  of;  and  about  as 
sharp,  tough,  juiceless,  and  biting  to  deal  with  as 
the  other  is  to  the  taste.  Silas  Peckham  kept  a 
young  ladies'  school  exactly  as  he  would  have 
kept  a  hundred  head  of  cattle,  —  for  the  sim 
ple,  unadorned  purpose  of  making  just  as  much 
money  in  just  as  few  years  as  could  be  safely 
done.  Mr.  Peckham  gave  very  little  personal  at 
tention  to  the  department  of  instruction,  but  was 


ELSIE  VENNER.  69 

always  busy  with  contracts  for  flour  and  pota 
toes,  beef  and  pork,  and  other  nutritive  staples, 
the  amount  of  which  required  for  such  an  estab 
lishment  was  enough  to  frighten  a  quartermaster. 
Mrs.  Peck  ham  was  from  the  West,  raised  on  In 
dian  corn  and  pork,  which  give  a  fuller  outline 
and  a  more  humid  temperament,  but  may  per 
haps  be  thought  to  render  people  a  little  coarse- 
fibred.  Her  specialty  was  to  look  after  the 
feathering,  cackling,  roosting,  rising,  and  general 
behavior  of  these  hundred  chicks.  An  honest, 
ignorant  woman,  she  could  not  have  passed  an 
examination  in  the  youngest  class.  So  this  dis 
tinguished  institution  was  under  the  charge  of  a 
commissary  and  a  housekeeper,  and  its  real  busi 
ness  was  making  money  by  taking  young  girls  in 
as  boarders.  • 

Connected  with  this,  however,  was  the  inci 
dental  fact,  which  the  public  took  for  the  prin 
cipal  one,  namely,  the  business  of  instruction. 
Mr.  Peckham  knew  well  enough  that  it  was  just 
as  well  to  have  good  instructors  as  bad  ones,  so 
far  as  cost  was  concerned,  and  a  great  deal  better 
for  the  reputation  of  his  feeding-establishment. 
He  tried  to  get  the  best  he  could  without  pay 
ing  too  much,  and,  having  got  them,  to  screw  all 
the  work  out  of  them  that  could  possibly  be  ex 
tracted. 

There  was  a  master  for  the  English  branches, 
with  a  young  lady  assistant.  There  was  another 
young  lady  who  taught  French,  of  the  ahvahng 


70  ELSIE  YEXXER. 

and  pahndahng  style,  which  does  not  exactly 
smack  of  the  asphalt  of  the  Boulevards.  There 
was  also  a  German  teacher  of  music,  who  some 
times  helped  in  French  of  the  ahfaung  and  bami- 
taung  style,  —  so  that,  between  the  two,  the  young 
ladies  could  hardly  have  been  mistaken  for  Paris 
ians,  by  a  Committee  of  the  French  Academy. 
The  German  teacher  also  taught  a  Latin  class 
after  his  fashion,  —  benna,  a  ben,  gahboot,  a  head, 
and  so  forth. 

The  master  for  the  English  branches  had  lately 
left  the  school  for  private  reasons,  which  need  not 
be  here  mentioned,  —  but  he  had  gone,  at  any 
rate,  and  it  was  his  place  which  had  been  offered 
to  Mr.  Bernard  Langdon.  The  offer  came  just 
in  season, —  as,  for  various  causes,  he  was  willing 
to  leave  the  place  where  he  had  begun  his  new 
experience. 

It  was  on  a  fine  morning,  that  Mr.  Bernard, 
ushered  in  by  Mr.  Peckham,  made  his  appearance 
in  the  great  schoolroom  of  the  Apollinean  Insti 
tute.  A  general  rustle  ran  all  round  the  seats 
when  the  handsome  young  man  was  introduced. 
The  principal  carried  him  to  the  desk  of  the 
young  lady  English  assistant,  Miss  Parley  by 
name,  and  introduced  him  to  her. 

There  was  not  a  great  deal  of  study  done  that 
day.  The  young  lady  assistant  had  to  point  out 
to  the  new  master  the  whole  routine  in  which  the 
classes  were  engaged  when  their  late  teacher  left, 
and  which  had  gone  on  as  well  as  it  could  since. 


ELSIE  VENXER.  71 

Then  Master  Langdon  had  a  great  many  ques 
tions  to  ask,  some  relating  to  his  new  duties,  and 
some,  perhaps,  implying  a  degree  of  curiosity  not 
very  unnatural  under  the  circumstances.  The 
truth  is,  the  general  effect  of  the  schoolroom, 
with  its  scores  of  young  girls,  all  their  eyes 
naturally  centring  on  -him  with  fixed  or  furtive 
glances,  was  enough  to  bewilder  and  confuse  a 
young  man  like  Master  Langdon,  though  he 
was  not  destitute  of  self-possession,  as  we  have 
already  seen. 

You  cannot  get  together  a  hundred  girls,  tak 
ing  them  as  they  come,  from  the  comfortable  and 
affluent  classes,  probably  anywhere,  certainly  not 
in  New  England,"  without  seeing  a  good  deal  of 
beauty.  In  fact,  we  very  commonly  mean  by 
beauty  the  way  young  girls  look  when  there  is 
nothing  to  hinder  their  looking  as  Nature  meant 
them  to.  And  the  great  schoolroom  of  the  Apol- 
linean  Institute  did  really  make  so  pretty  a  show 
on  the  morning  when  Master  Langdon  entered 
it,  that  he  might  be  pardoned  for  asking  Miss 
Darley  more  questions  about  his  scholars  than 
about  their  lessons. 

There  were  girls  of  all  ages :  little  creatures, 
some  pallid  and  delicate-looking,  the  offspring 
of  invalid  parents, —  much  given  to  books,  not 
much  to  mischief,  commonly  spoken  of  as  partic 
ularly  good  children,  and  contrasted  with  another 
sort,  girls  of  more  vigorous  organization,  who 
were  disposed  to  laughing  and  play,  and  re- 


72  ELSIE   YEXXER. 

quired  a  strong  hand  to  manage  them ;  —  then 
young  growing  misses  of  every  shade  of  Saxon 
complexion,  and  here  and  there  one  of  more 
Southern  hue :  blondes,  some  of  them  so  trans 
lucent-looking,  that  it  seemed  as  if  you  could  see 
the  souls  in  their  bodies,  like  bubbles  in  glass,  if 
souls  were  objects  of  sight;  brunettes,  some  with 
rose-red  colors,  and  some  with  that  swarthy  hue 
which  often  carries  with  it  a  heavily-shaded  lip, 
and  which  with  pure  outlines  and  outspoken  re 
liefs,  gives  us  some  of  our  handsomest  women, 
—  the  women  whom  ornaments  of  plain  gold 
adorn  more  than  any  other  parures  ;  and  again, 
but  only  here  and  there,  one  with  dark  hair  and 
gray  or  blue  eyes,  a  Celtic  type,  perhaps,  but 
found  in  our  native  stock  occasionally ;  rarest 
of  all,  a  light-haired  girl  with  dark  eyes,  hazel, 
brown,  or  of  the  color  of  that  mountain-brook 
spoken  of  in  this  chapter,  where  it  ran  through 
shadowy  woodlands.  With  these  were  to  be 
seen  at  intervals  some  of  maturer  years,  full 
blown  flowers  among  the  opening  buds,  with 
that  conscious"  look  upon  their  faces  which  so 
many  women  wear  during  the  period  when  they 
never  meet  a  single  man  without  having  his  mon 
osyllable  ready  for  him,  —  tied  as  they  are,  poor 
things!  on  the  rock  of  expectation,  each  of  them 
an  Andromeda  waiting  for  her  Perseus. 

"Who  is  that  girl  in  ringlets,  —  the  fourth  in 
the  third  row  on  the  right  ?  "  said  Master  Lang- 
don. 


ELSIE   VENNER.  73 

"  Charlotte  Ann  Wood,"  said  Miss  Darley ;  — 
"  writes  very  pretty  poems." 

"  Oh  !  —  And  the  pink  one,  three  seats  from 
her  ?  Looks  bright  ;  anything  in  her  ?  " 

"  Emma  Dean, —  day-scholar, —  Squire  Dean's 
daughter,  —  nice  girl,  —  second  medal  last  year." 

The  master  asked  these  two  questions  in  a 
careless  kind  of  way,  and  did  not  'seem  to  pay 
any  too  much  attention  to  the  answers. 

"  And  who  and  what  is  that,"  he  said,  — "  sit 
ting  a  little  apart  there,  —  that  strange,  wild-look- 
ing  girl?" 

This  time  he  put  the  real  question  he  wanted 
answered  ; — the  other  two  were  asked  at  random, 
as  masks  for  the  third. 

The  lady-teacher's  face  changed  ;  —  one  would 
have  said  she  was  frightened  or  troubled.  She 
looked  at  the  girl  doubtfully,  as  if  she  might  hear 
the  master's  question  and  its  answer.  But  the 
girl  did  not  look  up ;  —  she  was  winding  a  gold 
chain  about  her  wrist,  and  then  uncoiling  it,  as  if 
in  a  kind  of  reverie. 

Miss  Darley  drew  close  to'  the  master  and 
placed  her  hand  so  as  to  hide  her  lips.  "  Don't 
look  at  her  as  if  we  were  talking  about  her,"  she 
whispered  softly  ;  —  "  that  is  Elsie  Venner." 


74  ELSIE  VENNER. 


CHAPTER.  V. 

AN    OLD-FASHIONED    DESCRIPTIVE    CHAPTER. 

IT  was  a  comfort  to  get  to  a  place  with  some 
thing  like  society,  with  residences  which  had  pre 
tensions  to  elegance,  with  people  of  some  breeding, 
with  a  newspaper,  and  "stores"  to  advertise  in  it, 
and  with  two  or  three  churches  to  keep  each 
other  alive  by  wholesome  agitation.  Rockland 
was  such  a  place. 

Some  of  the  natural  features  of  the  town  have 
been  described  already.  The  Mountain,  of  course, 
was  what  gave  it  its  character,  and  redeemed  it 
from  wearing  the  commonplace  expression  which 
belongs  to  ordinary  country-villages.  Beautiful, 
wild,  invested  with  the  mystery  which  belongs  to 
untrodden  spaces,  and  with  enough  of  terror  to 
give  it  dignity,  it  had  yet  closer  relations  with 
the  town  over  which  it  brooded  than  the  passing 
stranger  knew  of.  Thus,  it  made  a  local  climate 
by  cutting  off  the  northern  winds  and  holding  the 
sun's  heat  like  a  garden-wall.  Peach-trees,  which, 
on  the  northern  side  of  the  mountain,  hardly  ever 
came  to  fruit,  ripened  abundant  crops  in  Rock- 
land. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  75 

But  there  was  still  another  relation  between 
the  mountain  and  the  town  at  its  foot,  which 
strangers  were  not  likely  to  hear  alluded  to,  and 
which  was  oftener  thought  of  than  spoken  of  by 
its  inhabitants.  Those  high-impending  forests,  — 
"  hangers,"  as  White  of  Selborne  would  have 
called  them,  —  sloping  far  upward  and  backward 
into  the  distance,  had  always  an  air  of  menace 
blended  with  their  wild  beauty.  It  seemed  as  if 
some  heaven-scaling  Titan  had  thrown  his  shag 
gy  robe  over  the  bare,  precipitous  flanks  of  the 
rocky  summit,  and  it  might  at  any  moment  slide 
like  a  garment  flung  carelessly  on  the  nearest 
chance-support,  and,  so  sliding,  crush  the  village 
out  of  being,  as  the  Rossberg  when  it  tumbled 
over  on  the  valley  of  Goldau. 

Persons  have  been  known  to  remove  from  the 
place,  after  a  short  residence  in  it,  because  they 
were  haunted  day  and  night  by  the  thought  of 
this  awful  green  wall  piled  up  into  the  air  over 
their  heads.  They  would  lie  awake  of  nights, 
thinking  they  heard  the  muffled  snapping  of 
roots,  as  if  a  thousand  acres  of  the  mountain 
side  were  tugging  to  break  away,  like  the  snow 
from  a  house-roof,  and  a  hundred  thousand  trees 
were  clinging  with  all  their  fibres  to  hold  back 
the  soil  just  ready  to  peel  away  and  crash  down 
with  all  its  rocks  and  forest-growths.  And  yet, 
by  one  of  those  strange  contradictions  we  are 
constantly  finding  in  human  nature,  there  were 
natives  of  the  town  who  would  come  back  thirty 


76  ELSIE  TENNER. 

or  forty  years  after  leaving  it,  just  to  nestle  under 
this  same  threatening  mountain-side,  as  old  men 
sun  themselves  against  southward-facing  walls. 
The  old  dreams  and  legends  of  danger  added  to 
the  attraction.  If  the  mountain  should  ever  slide, 
they  had  a  kind  of  feeling  as  if  they  ought  to  be 
there.  It  was  a  fascination  like  that  which  the 
rattlesnake  is  said  to  exert. 

This  comparison  naturally  suggests  the  recol 
lection  of  that  other  source  of  danger  which  was 
an  element  in  the  every-day  life  of  the  Rockland 
people.  The  folks  in  some  of  the  neighboring 
towns  had  a  joke  against  them,  that  a  Rock- 
lander  couldn't  hear  a  bean-pod  rattle  without 
saying,  "  The  Lord  have  mercy  on  us ! "  It  is 
very  true,  that  many  a  nervous  old  lady  has  had 
a  terrible  start,  caused  by  some  mischievous 
young  rogue's  giving  a  sudden  shake  to  one  of 
these  noisy  vegetable  products  in  her  immediate 
vicinity.  Yet,  strangely  enough,  many  persons 
missed  the  excitement  of  the  possibility  of  a  fatal 
bite  in  other  regions,  where  there  were  nothing 
but  black  and  green  and  striped  snakes,  mean 
ophidians,  having  the  spite  of  the  nobler  serpent 
without  his  venom,  —  poor  crawling  creatures, 
whom  Nature  would  not  trust  with  a  poison-bag. 
Many  natives  of  Rockland  did  unquestionably 
experience  a  certain  gratification  in  this  infinitesi 
mal  sense  of  danger.  It  was  noted  that  the  old 
people  retained  their  hearing  longer  than  in  other 
places.  Some  said  it  was  the  softened  climate, 


ELSIE  VENNER.  77 

but  others  believed  it  was  owing  to  the  habit  of 
keeping  their  ears  open  whenever  they  were  walk 
ing  through  the  grass  or  in  the  woods.  At  any 
rate,  a  slight  sense  of  danger  is  often  an  agreea 
ble  stimulus.  People  sip  their  creme  de  noyau 
with  a  peculiar  tremulous  pleasure,  because  there 
is  a  bare  possibility  that  it  may  contain  prussic 
acid  enough  to  knock  them  over ;  in  which  case 
they  will  lie  as  dead  as  if  a  thunder-cloud  had 
emptied  itself  into  the  earth  through  their  brain 
and  marrow. 

But  Rockland  had  other  features  which  helped 
to  give  it  a  special  character.  First  of  all,  there 
was  one  grand  street  which  was  its  chief  glory. 
Elm  Street  it  was  called,  naturally  enough,  for  its 
elms  made  a  long,  pointed-arched  gaUery  of  it 
through  most  of  its  extent.  No  natural  Gothic 
arch  compares,  for  a  moment,  with  that  formed 
by  two  American  elms,  where  their  lofty  jets 
of  foliage  shoot  across  each  other's  ascending 
curves,  to  intermingle  their  showery  flakes  of 
green.  When  one  looks  through  a  long  double 
row  of  these,  as  in  that  lovely  avenue  which  the 
poets  of  Yale  remember  so  well,  — 

"  O,  could  the  vista  of  my  life  but  now  as  bright  appear 
As  when  I  first  through  Temple  Street  looked  down  thine  espalier!  " 

he  beholds  a  temple  not  built  with  hands,  fairer 
than  any  minster,  with  all  its  clustered  stems  and 
flowering  capitals,  that  ever  grew  in  stone. 

Nobody  knows  New  England  who  is  not  on 
terms  of  intimacy  with  one  of  its  elms.  The 


78  ELSIE   YEXXER. 

elm  comes  nearer  to  having  a  soul  than  any  other 
vegetable  creature  among  us.  It  loves  man  as 
man  loves  it.  It  is  modest  and  patient.  It  has 
a  small  flake  of  a  seed  which  blows  in  every 
where  and  makes  arrangements  for  coming  up 
by-and-by.  So,  in  spring,  one  finds  a  crop  of 
baby-elms  among  his  carrots  and  parsnips,  very 
weak  and  small  compared  to  those  succulent 
vegetables.  The  baby-elms  die,  most  of  them, 
slain,  unrecognized  or  unheeded,  by  hand  or  hoe, 
as  meekly  as  Herod's  innocents.  One  of  them 
gets  overlooked,  perhaps,  until  it  has  established 
a  kind  of  right  to  stay.  Three  generations  of 
carrot  and  parsnip-consumers  have  passed  away, 
yourself  among  them,  and  now  let  your  great- 
grandson  look  for  the  baby-elm.  Twenty-two 
feet  of  clean  girth,  three  hundred  and  sixty  feet 
in  the  line  that  bounds  its  leafy  circle,  it  covers 
the  boy  with  such  a  canopy  as  neither  glossy- 
leafed  oak  nor  insect-haunted  linden  ever  lifted 
into  the  summer  skies. 

Elm  Street  was  the  pride  of  Rockland,  but  not 
only  on  account  of  its  Gothic-arched  vista.  In 
this  street  were  most  of  the  great  houses,  or 
"  mansion-houses,"  as  it  was  usual  to  call  them. 
Along  this  street,  also,  the  more  nicely  kept  and 
neatly  painted  dwellings  were  chiefly  congre 
gated.  It  was  the  correct  thing  for  a  Rockland 
dignitary  to  have  a  house  in  Elm  Street. 

A  New  England  "  mansion-house  "  is  naturally 
square,  with  dormer  windows  projecting  from  the 


ELSIE   VEXNER.  79 

roof,  which  has  a  balustrade  with  turned  posts 
round  it.  It  shows  a  good  breadth  of  front-yard 
before  its  door,  as  its  owner  shows  a  respectable 
expanse  of  clean  shirt-front.  It  has  a  lateral 
margin  beyond  its  stables  and  offices,  as  its  mas 
ter  wears  his  white  wrist-bands  showing  beyond 
his  coat-cuffs.  It  may  not  have  what  can  prop 
erly  be  called  grounds,  but  it  must  have  elbow- 
room,  at  any  rate.  Without  it,  it  is  like  a  man 
who  is  always  tight-buttoned  for  want  of  any 
linen  to  show.  The  mansion-house  which  has ' 
had  to  button  itself  up  tight  in  fences,  for  want 
of  green  or  gravel  margin,  will  be  advertising  for 
boarders  presently.  The  old  English  pattern  of 
the  New  England  mansion-house,  only  on  a 
somewhat  grander  scale,  is  Sir  Thomas  Abney's 
place,  where  dear,  good  Dr.  Watts  said  prayers 
for  the  family,  and  wrote  those  blessed  hymns  of 
his  that  sing  us  into  consciousness  in  our  cradles, 
and  come  back  to  us  in  sweet,  single  verses,  be 
tween  the  moments  of  wandering  and  of  stupor, 
when  we  lie  dying,  and  sound  over  us  when  we 
can  no  longer  hear  them,  bringing  grateful  tears 
to  the  hot,  aching  eyes  beneath  the  thick,  black 
veils,  and  carrying  the  holy  calm  with  them 
which  filled  the  good  man's  heart,  as  he  prayed 
and  sung  under  the  shelter  of  the  old  English, 
mansion-house. 

Next  to  the  mansion-houses,  came  the  two-story, 
trim,  white-painted,  "  genteel "  houses,  which,  be 
ing  more  gossipy  and  less  nicely  bred,  crowded 


80  ELSIE  TENNER. 

close  up  to  the  street,  instead  of  standing  back 
from  it  with  arms  akimbo,  like  the  mansion- 
houses.  Their  little  front-yards  were  very  com 
monly  full  of  lilac  and  syringa  and  other  bushes, 
which  were  allowed  to  smother  the  lower  story 
almost  to  the  exclusion  of  light  and  air,  so  that, 
what  with  small  windows  and  small  window- 
panes,  and  the  darkness  made  by  these  choking 
growths  of  shrubbery,  the  front  parlors  of  some 
of  these  houses  were  the  most  tomb-like,  mel- 
'ancholy  places  that  could  be  found  anywhere 
among  the  abodes  of  the  living.  Their  garnish 
ing  was  apt  to  assist  this  impression.  Large- 
patterned  carpets,  which  always  look  discontented 
in  little  rooms,  hair-cloth  furniture,  black  and 
shiny  as  beetles'  wing-cases,  and  centre-tables, 
with  a  sullen  oil-lamp  of  the  kind  called  astral 
by  our  imaginative  ancestors,  in  the  centre, — 
these  things  were  inevitable.  In  set  piles  round 
the  lamp  was  ranged  the  current  literature  of  the 
day,  in  the  form  of  Temperance  Documents,  un 
bound  numbers  of  one  of  the  Unknown  Public's 
Magazines  with  worn-out  steel  engravings  and 
high-colored  fashion-plates,  the  Poems  of  a  dis 
tinguished  British  author  whom  it  is  unnecessary 
to  mention,  a  volume  of  sermons,  or  a  novel  or 
two,  or  both,  according  to  the  tastes  of  the  family, 
and  the  Good  Book,  which  is  always  Itself  in  the 
cheapest  and  commonest  company.  The  father 
of  the  family  with  his  hand  in  the  breast  of  his 
coat,  the  mother  of  the  same  in  a  wide-bordered 


ELSIE  VEJMNER.  81 

cap,  sometimes  a  print  of  the  Last  Supper,  by  no 
means'  Morghen's,  or  the  Father  of  his  Country, 
or  the  old  General,  or  the  Defender  of  the  Constitu 
tion,  or  an  unknown  clergyman  with  an  open  book 
before  him,  —  these  were  the  usual  ornaments 
of  the  walls,  the  first  two  a  matter  of  rigor,  the 
others  according  to  politics  and  other  tendencies. 

This  intermediate  class  of  houses,  wherever 
one  finds  them  in  New  England  towns,  are  very 
apt  to  be  cheerless  and  unsatisfactory.  They 
have  neither  the  luxury  of  the  mansion-house  nor 
the  comfort  of  the  farm-house.  They  are  rarely 
kept  at  an  agreeable  temperature.  The  mansion- 
house  has  large  fireplaces  and  generous  chimneys, 
and  is  open  to  the  sunshine.  The  farm-house 
makes  no  pretensions,  but  it  has  a  good  warm 
kitchen,  at  any  rate,  and  one  can  be  comfortable 
there  with  the  rest  of  the  family,  without  fear 
and  without  reproach.  These  lesser  country- 
houses  of  genteel  aspirations  are  much  given  to 
patent  subterfuges  of  one  kind  and  another  to  get 
heat  without  combustion.  The  chilly  parlor  and 
the  slippery  hair-cloth  seat  take  the  life  out  of  the 
warmest  welcome.  If  one  would  make  these 
places  wholesome,  happy,  and  cheerful,  the  first 
precept  would  be,  —  The  dearest  fuel,  plenty  of 
it,  and  let  half  the  heat  go  up  the  chimney.  If 
you  can't  afford  this,  don't  try  to  live  in  a  "  gen 
teel  "  fashion,  but  stick  to  the  ways  of  the  hon 
est  farm-house. 

There  were  a   good   many  comfortable  farm- 


82  ELSII:  v I:\NKI:. 

houses  scattered  about  Rockland.  The  best  of 
them  were  something  of  the  following  pattern, 
which  is  too  often  superseded  of  late  by  a  more 
pretentious,  but  infinitely  less  pleasing  kind  of 
rustic  architecture.  A  little  back  from  the  road, 
seated  directly  on  the  green  sod,  rose  a  plain 
wooden  building,  two  stories  in  front,  with  a  long 
roof  sloping  backwards  to  within  a  few  feet  of 
the  ground.  This,  like  the  "  mansion-house,"  is 
copied  from  an  old  English  pattern.  Cottages 
of  this  model  may  be  seen  in  Lancashire,  for  in 
stance,  always  with  the  same  honest,  homely 
look,  as  if  then:  roofs  acknowledged  their  rela 
tionship  to  the  soil  out  of  which  they  sprung. 
The  walls  were  unpainted,  but  turned  by  the 
slow  action  of  sun  and  air  and  rain  to  a  quiet 
dove-  or  slate-color.  An  old  broken  mill-stone  at 
the  door,  —  a  well-sweep  pointing  like  a  finger 
to  the  heavens,  which  the  shining  round  of  water 
beneath  looked  up  at  like  a  dark  unsleeping  eye, 
—  a  single  large  elm  a  little  at  one  side,  —  a  barn 
twice  as  big  as  the  house,  —  a  cattle-yard,  with 

"  The  white  horns  tossing  above  the  wall,"  — 

some  fields,  in  pasture  or  in  crops,  with  low  stone 
walls  round  them,  —  a  row  of  beehives.  —  a  gar 
den-patch,  with  roots,  and  currant-bushes,  and 
rnany-hued  hollyhocks,  and  swollen-stemmed, 
globe-headed,  seedling  onions,  and  marigolds, 
and  flower-de-luces,  and  lady's-delights,  and  pe 
onies,  crowding  in  together,  with  southernwood 


ELSIE   VEXXER.  83 

in  the  borders,  and  woodbine  and  hops  and 
morning-glories  climbing  as  they  got  a  chance, 
—  these  were  the  features  by  which  the  Rock- 
land-born  children  remembered  the  farm-house, 
when  they  had  grown  to  be  men.  Such  are  the 
recollections  that  come  over  poor  sailor-boys 
crawling  out  on  reeling  yards  to  reef  topsails  as 
their  vessels  stagger  round  the  stormy  Cape  ;  and 
such  are  the  flitting  images  that  make  the  eyes 
of  old  country-born  merchants  look  dim  and 
dreamy,  as  they  sit  in  their  city  palaces,  warm 
with  the  after-dinner  flush  of  the  red  wave  out 
of  which  Memory  arises,  as  Aphrodite  arose  from 
the  green  waves  of  the  ocean. 

Two  meeting-houses  stood  on  two  eminences, 
facing  each  other,  and  looking  like  a  couple  of 
fighting-cocks  with  their  necks  straight  up  in  the 
air,  —  as  if  they  would  flap  their  roofs,  the  next 
thing,  and  crow  out  of  their  upstretched  steeples, 
and  peck  at  each  other's  glass  eyes  with  their 
sharp-pointed  weathercocks. 

The  first  was  a  good  pattern  of  the  real  old- 
fashioned  New  England  meeting-house.  It  was 
a  large  barn  with  windows,  fronted  by  a  square 
tower  crowned  with  a  kind  of  wooden  bell  in 
verted  and  raised  on  legs,  out  of  which  rose  a 
slender  spire  with  the  sharp-billed  weathercock  at 
its  summit.  Inside,  tall,  square  pews  with  flap 
ping  seats,  and  a  gallery  running  round  three 
sides  of  the  building.  On  the  fourth  side  the 
pulpit,  with  a  huge,  dusty  sounding-board  hang- 


84  ELSIK    VF.XNKR. 

ing  over  it.  Here  preached  the  Reverend  Pierre- 
pont  Honeywood,  D.  D.,  successor,  after  a  number 
of  generations,  to  the  office  and  the  parsonage 
of  the  Reverend  Didymus  Bean,  before  men 
tioned,  but  not  suspected  of  any  of  his  alleged 
heresies.  He  held  to  the  old  faith  of  the  Puri 
tans,  and  occasionally  delivered  a  discourse  which 
was  considered  by  the  hard-headed  theologians 
of  his  parish  to  have  settled  the  whole  matter 
fully  and  finally,  so  that  now  there  was  a  good 
logical  basis  laid  down  for  the  Millennium,  which 
might  begin  at  once  upon  the  platform  of  his 
demonstrations.  Yet  the  Reverend  Dr.  Honey- 
wood  was  fonder  of  preaching  plain,  practical 
sermons  about  the  duties  of  life,  and  showing  his 
Christianity  in  abundant  good  works  among  his 
people.  It  was  noticed  by  some  few  of  his  flock, 
not  without  comment,  that  the  great  majority  of 
his  texts  came  from  the  Gospels,  and  this  more 
and  more  as  he  became  interested  in  various  be 
nevolent  enterprises  which  brought  him  into  re 
lations  with  ministers  and  kind-hearted  laymen 
of  other  denominations.  He  was  in  fact  a  man 
of  a  very  warm,  open,  and  exceedingly  human 
disposition,  and,  although  bred  by  a  clerical 
father,  whose  motto  was  "Sit  anima  mea  cum 
Puritanis"  he  exercised  his  human  faculties  in 
the  harness  of  his  ancient  faith  with  such  free 
dom  that  the  straps  of  it  got  so  loose  they  did 
not  interfere  greatly  with  the  circulation  of  the 
warm  blood  through  his  system.  Once  in  a 


ELSIE   VKNXER.  85 

while  he  seemed  to  think  it  necessary  to  come 
out  with  a  grand  doctrinal  sermon,  and  then  he 
would  lapse  away  for  a  while  into  preaching  on 
men's  duties  to  each  other  and  to  society,  and  hit 
hard,  perhaps,  at  some  of  the  actual  vices  of  the 
time  and  place,  and  insist  with  such  tenderness 
and  eloquence  on  the  great  depth  and  breadth 
of  true  Christian  love  and  charity,  that  his  oldest 
deacon  shook  his  head,  and  wished  he  had  shown 
as  much  interest  when  he  was  preaching,  three 
Sabbaths  back,  on  Predestination,  or  in  his  dis 
course  against  the  Sabellians.  But  he  was  sound 
in  the  faith  ;  no  doubt  of  that.  Did  he  not  pre 
side  at  the  council  held  in  the  town  -of  Tama 
rack,  on  the  other  side  of  the  mountain,  which 
expelled  its  clergyman  for  maintaining  heretical 
doctrines  ?  As  presiding  officer,  he  did  not  vote, 
of  course,  but  there  was  no  doubt  that  he  was  all 
right ;  he  had  some  of  the  Edwards  blood  in  him, 
and  that  couldn't  very  well  let  him  go  wrong. 

The  meeting-house  on  the  other  and  opposite 
summit  was  of  a  more  modern  style,  considered 
by  many  a  great  improvement  on  the  old  New 
England  model,  so  that  it  is  not  uncommon  for  a 
country  parish  to  pull  down  its  old  meeting-house, 
which  has  been  preached  in  for  a  hundred  years 
or  so,  and  put  up  one  of  these  more  elegant  edi 
fices.  The  new  building  was  in  what  may  be 
called  the  florid  shingle- Gothic  manner.  Its  pin 
nacles  and  crockets  and  other  ornaments  were, 
like  the  body  of  the  building,  all  of  pine  wood, 


86  ELSIE  YEXNER. 

—  an  admirable  material,  as  it  is  very  soft  and 
easily  worked,  and  can  be  painted  of  any  color 
desired.  Inside,  the  walls  were  stuccoed  in  imita 
tion  of  stone,  —  first  a  dark -brown  square,  then 
two  light-brown  squares,  then  another  dark-brown 
square,  and  so  on,  to  represent  the  accidental  dif 
ferences  of  shade  always  noticeable  in  the  real 
stones  of  which  walls  are  built.  To  be  sure,  the 
architect  could  not  help  getting  his  party-colored 
squares  in  almost  as  regular  rhythmical  order  as 
those  of  a  chess-board ;  but  nobody  can  avoid 
doing  things  in  a  systematic  and  serial  way  ;  in 
deed,  people  who  wish  to  plant  trees  in  natural 
clumps  know  very  well  that  they  cannot  keep 
from  making  regular  lines  and  symmetrical  fig 
ures,  unless  by  some  trick  or  other,  as  that  one  of 
throwing  a  peck  of  potatoes  up  into  the  air  and 
sticking  in  a  tree  wherever  a  potato  happens  to 
fall.  The  pews  of  this  meeting-house  were  the 
usual  oblong  ones,  where  people  sit  close  together 
with  a  ledge  before  them  to  support  their  hymn- 
books,  liable  only  to  occasional  contact  with  the 
back  of  the  next  pew's  heads  or  bonnets,  and  a 
place  running  under  the  seat  of  that  pew  where 
hats  could  be  deposited,  —  always  at  the  risk 
of  the  owner,  in  case  of  injury  by  boots  or 
crickets. 

In  this  meeting-house  preached  the  Reverend 
Chauncy  Fairweather,  a  divine  of  the  "  Liberal " 
school,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  bred  at  that  fa 
mous  college  which  used  to  be  thought,  twenty 


ELSIE   tENNER.  87 

or  thirty  years  ago,  to  have  the  monopoly  of  train 
ing  young  men  in  the  milder  forms  of  heresy. 
His  ministrations  were  attended  with  decency, 
but  not  followed  with  enthusiasm.  "  The  beauty 
of  virtue  "  got  to  be  an  old  story  at  last.  "  The 
moral  dignity  of  human  nature  "  ceased  to  excite 
a  thrill  of  satisfaction,  after  some  hundred  repeti 
tions.  It  grew  to  be  a  dull  business,  this  preach 
ing  against  stealing  and  intemperance,  while  he 
knew  very  well  that  the  thieves  were  prowling 
round  orchards  and  empty  houses,  instead  of  be 
ing  there  to  hear  the  sermon,  and  that  the  drunk 
ards,  being  rarely  church-goers,  get  little  good  by 
the  statistics  and  eloquent  appeals  of  the  preacher. 
Every  now  and  then,  however,  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Fairweather  let  off  a  polemic  discourse  against 
his  neighbor  opposite,  which  waked  his  people  up 
a  little ;  but  it  was  a  languid  congregation,  at 
best,  —  very  apt  to  stay  away  from  meeting  in 
the  afternoon,  and  not  at  all  given  to  extra  even 
ing  services.  The  minister,  unlike  his  rival  of 
the  other  side  of  the  way,  was  a  down-hearted 
and  timid  kind  of  man.  He  went  on  preaching 
as  he  had  been  taught  to  preach,  but  he  had  mis 
givings  at  times.  There  was  a  little  Roman 
Catholic  church  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  where  his 
own  was  placed,  which  he  always  had  to  pass  on 
Sundays.  He  could  never  look  on  the  thronging 
multitudes  that  crowded  its  pews  and  aisles  or 
knelt  bare-headed  on  its  steps,  without  a  longing 
to  get  in  among  them  and  go  down  on  his  knees 


88  ELSIE    VEXNKK. 

and  enjoy  that  luxury  of  devotional  contact  which 
makes  a  worshipping  throng  as  different  from  the 
same  numbers  praying  apart  as  a  bed  of  coals  is 
from  a  trail  of  scattered  cinders. 

"  Oh,  if  I  could  but  huddle  in  with  those  poor 
laborers  and  working-women  !  "  he  would  say  to 
himself.  "  If  I  could  but  breathe  that  atmosphere, 
stifling  though  it  be,  yet  made  holy  by  ancient 
litanies,  and  cloudy  with  the  smoke  of  hallowed 
incense,  for  one  hour,  instead  of  droning  over 
these  moral  precepts  to  my  half-sleeping  congre 
gation  !  "  The  intellectual  isolation  of  his  sect 
preyed  upon  him  ;  for,  of  all  terrible  things  to 
natures  like  his,  .the  most  terrible  is  to  belong  to 
a  minority.  No  person  that  looked  at  his  thin 
and  sallow  cheek,  his  sunken  and  sad  eye,  his 
tremulous  lip,  his  contracted  forehead,  or  who 
heard  his  querulous,  though  not  unmusical  voice, 
could  fail  to  see  that  his  life  was  an  uneasy  one, 
that  he  was  engaged  in  some  inward  conflict. 
His  dark,  melancholic  aspect  contrasted  with  his 
seemingly  cheerful  creed,  and  was  all  the  more 
striking,  as  the  worthy  Dr..  Honeywood,  profess 
ing  a  belief  which  made  him  a  passenger  on 
board  a  shipwrecked  planet,  was  yet  a  most  good- 
humored  and  companionable  gentleman,  whose 
laugh  on  week-days  did  one  as  much  good  to 
listen  to  as  the  best  sermon  he  ever  delivered  on 
a  Sunday. 

A  mile  or  two  from  the  centre  of  Rockland  was 
'a  pretty  little  Episcopal  church,  with  a  roof  like  a 


ELSIE  VENNER.  89 

wedge  of  cheese,  a  square  tower,  a  stained  win 
dow,  and  a  trained  rector, 'who  read  the  service 
with  such  ventral  depth  of  utterance  and  rrredu- 
plication  of  the  rrresonant  letter,  that  his  own 
mother  would  not  have  known  him  for  her  son, 
if  the  good  woman  had  not  ironed  his  surplice 
and  put  it  on  with  her  own  hands. 

There  were  two  public-houses  in  the  place  : 
one  dignified  with  the  name  of  the  Mountain 
House,  somewhat  frequented  by  city-people  in 
the  summer  months,  large-fronted,  three-storied, 
balconied,  boasting  a  distinct  ladies'-drawing- 
room,  and  spreading  a  table  d'hote  of  some  pre 
tensions  ;  the  other,  "  Pollard's  Tahvern,"  in  the 
common  speech,  —  a  two-story  building,  with  a 
bar-room,  once  famous,  where  there  was  a  great 
smell  of  hay  and  boots  and  pipes  and  all  other 
bucolic-flavored  elements,  —  where  games  of 
checkers  were  played  on  the  back  of  the  bel 
lows  with  red  and  white  kernels  of  corn,  or  with 
beans  and  coffee,  —  where  a  man  slept  in  a  box- 
settle  at  night,  to  wake  up  early  passengers, — 
where  teamsters  came  in,  with  wooden-handled 
whips  and  coarse  frocks,  reinforcing  the  bucolic 
flavor  of  the  atmosphere,  and  middle-aged  male 
gossips,  sometimes  including  the  squire  of  the 
neighboring  law-office,  gathered  to  exchange  a 
question  or  two-  about  the  news,  and  then  fall 
into  that  solemn  state  of  suspended  animation 
which  the  temperance  bar-rooms  of  modern  days 
produce  in  human  beings,  as  the  Grotta  del  Cane 


90  ELSIi:   YKXXER. 

does  in  dogs  in  the  well-known  experiments  re 
lated  by  travellers.  This  bar-room  used  to  be 
famous  for  drinking  and  story-telling,  and  some 
times  fighting,  in  old  times.  That  was  when 
there  were  rows  of  decanters  on  the  shelf  behind 
the  bar,  and  a  hissing  vessel  of  hot  water  ready, 
to  make  punch,  and  three  or  four  loggerheads 
(long  irons  clubbed  at  the  end)  were  always  lying 
in  the  fire  in  the  cold  season,  waiting  to  be 
plunged  into  sputtering  and  foaming  mugs  of 
flip,  —  a  goodly  compound,  speaking  according 
to  the  flesh,  made  with  beer  and  sugar,  and  a 
certain  suspicion  of  strong  waters,  over  which  a 
little  nutmeg  being  grated,  and  in  it  the  hot  iron 
being  then  allowed  to  sizzle,  there  results  a  pe 
culiar  singed  aroma,  which  the  wise  regard  as  a 
warning  to  remove  themselves  at  once  out  of  the 
reach  of  temptation. 

But  the  bar  of  Pollard's  Tahvern  no  longer 
presented  its  old  attractions,  and  the  loggerheads 
had  long  disappeared  from  the  fire.  In  place  of 
the  decanters,  were  boxes  containing  "  lozengers," 
as  they  were  commonly  called,  sticks  of  candy  in 
jars,  cigars  in  tumblers,  a  few  lemons,  grown 
hard-skinned  and  marvellously  shrunken  by  long 
exposure,  but  still  feebly  suggestive  of  possible 
lemonade, —  the  whole  ornamented  by  festoons 
of  yellow  and  blue  cut  fly-paper.  On  the  front 
shelf  of  the  bar  stood  a  large  German-silver 
pitcher  of  water,  and  scattered  about  were  ill- 
conditioned  lamps,  with  wicks  that  always  wanted 


ELSIE  VENNER.  91 

picking,  which  burned  red  and  smoked  a  good 
deal,  and  were  apt  to  go  out  without  any  obvious 
cause,  leaving  strong  reminiscences  of  the  whale- 
fishery  in  the  circumambient  air. 

The  common  school-houses  of  Rockland  were 
dwarfed  by  the  grandeur  of  the  Apollinean  Insti 
tute.  The  master  passed  one  of  them,  in  a  walk 
he  was  taking,  soon  after  his  arrival  at  Rockland. 
He  looked  in  "at  the  rows  of  desks,  and  recalled 
his  late  experiences.  He  could  not  help  laugh 
ing,  as  he  thought  how  neatly  he  had  knocked  the 
young  butcher  off  his  pins. 

"  '  A  little  science  is  a  dangerous  thing,' 

as  well  as  a  little  'learning,'"  he  said  to  himself; 
"  only  it 's  dangerous  to  the  fellow  you  try  it  on." 
And  he  cut  him  a  good  stick,  and  began  climbing 
the  side  of  The  Mountain  to  get  a  look  at  that 
famous  Rattlesnake  Ledge. 


92  ELSIE  VEXNER. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  SUNBEAM  AND  THE  SHADOW. 

THE  virtue  of  the  world  is  not  mainly  in  its 
leaders.  In  the  midst  of  the  multitude  which 
follows  there  is  often  something  better  than  in  the 
one  that  goes  before.  Old  generals  wanted  to 
take  Toulon,  but  one  of  their  young  colonels 
showed  them  how.  The  junior  counsel  has  been 
known  not  unfrequently  to  make  a  better  argu 
ment  than  his  senior  fellow,  —  if,  indeed,  he  did 
not  make  both  their  arguments.  Good  ministers 
will  tell  you  they  have  parishioners  who  beat 
them  in  the  practice  of  the  virtues.  A  great 
establishment,  got  up  on  commercial  principles, 
like  the  Apollinean  Institute,  might  yet  be  well 
carried  on,  if  it  happened  to  get  good  teachers. 
And  when  Master  Langdon  came  to  see  its  man 
agement,  he  recognized  that  there  must  be  fidelity 
and  intelligence  somewhere  among  the  instruc 
tors.  It  was  only  necessary  to  look  for  a  moment 
at  the  fair,  open  forehead,  the  still,  tranquil  eye  of 
gentle,  habitual  authority,  the  sweet  gravity  that 
lay  upon  the  lips,  to  hear  the  clear  answers  to  the 
pupils'  questions,  to  notice  how  every  request  had 


ELSIE  VENNER.  93 

the  force  without  the  form  of  a  command,  and 
the  young  man  could  not  doubt  that  the  good 
genius  of  the  school  stood  before  him  in  the  per 
son  of  Helen  Darley. 

It  was  the  old  story.  A  poor  country-clergy 
man  dies,  and  leaves  a  widow  and  a  daughter. 
In  Old  England  the  daughter  would  have  eaten 
the  bitter  bread  of  a  governess  in  some  rich  fam 
ily.  In  New  England  she  must  keep  a  school. 
So,  rising  from  one  sphere  to  another,  she  at 
length  finds  herself  the  prima  donna  in  the  de 
partment  of  instruction  in  Mr.  Silas  Peckham's 
educational  establishment. 

What  a  miserable  thing  it  is  to  be  poor! 
She  was  dependent,  frail,  sensitive,  conscien 
tious.  She  was  in  the  power  of  a  hard,  grasp 
ing,  thin-blooded,  tough-fibred,  trading  educator, 
who  neither  knew  nor  cared  for  a  tender  woman's 
sensibilities,  but  who  paid  her  and  meant  to  have 
his  money's  worth  out  of  her  brains,  and  as  much 
more  than  his  money's  worth  as  he  could  get. 
She  was  consequently,  in  plain  English,  over 
worked,  and  an  overworked  woman  is  always  a 
sad  sight,  —  sadder  a  great  deal  than  an  over 
worked  man,  because  she  is  so  much  more  fertile 
in  capacities  of  suffering  than  a  man.  She  has  / 
so  many  varieties  of  headache,  —  sometimes  as  / 
if  Jael  were  driving  the  nail  that  killed  Sisera/ 
into  -her  temples,  —  sometimes  letting  her  work! 
with  half  her  brain  while  the  other  half  throbs  as 
if  it  would  go  to  pieces, —  sometimes  tightening! 


V 


94  ELSIE  TENNER. 

round  the  brows  as  if  her  cap-band  were  a  ring 
of  iron,  —  and  then  her  neuralgias,  and  her  back 
aches,  and  her  fits  of  depression,  in  which  she 
thinks  she  is  nothing  and  less  than  nothing,  and 
those  paroxysms  which  men  speak  slightingly  of 
as  hysterical,  —  convulsions,  that  is  all,  only  not 
commonly  fatal  ones,  —  so  many  trials  which 
belong  to  her  fine  and  mobile  structure,  —  that 
she  is  always  entitled  to  pity,  when  she  is  placed 
in  conditions  which  develop  her  nervous  tenden 
cies. 

The  poor  young  lady's  work  had,  of  course, 
been  doubled  since  the  departure  of  Master  Lang- 
don's  predecessor.  Nobody  knows  what  the  wea 
riness  of  instruction  is,  as  soon  as  the  teacher's 
faculties  begin  to  be  overtasked,  but  those  who 
have  tried  it.  The  relays  of  fresh  pupils,  each 
new  set  with  its  exhausting  powers  in  full  ac 
tion,  coming  one  after  another,  take  out  all  the 
reserved  forces  and  faculties  of  resistance  from 
the  subject  of  their  draining  process. 

The  day's  work  was  over,  and  it  was  late  in 
the  evening,  when  she  sat  down,  tired  and  faint, 
with  a  great  bundle  of  girls'  themes  or  compo 
sitions  to  read  over  before  she  could  rest  her 
weary  head  on  the  pillow  of  her  narrow  trundle- 
bed,  and  forget  for  a  while  the  treadmill  stair  of 
labor  she  was  daily  climbing. 

How  she  dreaded  this  most  forlorn  of  .all  a 
teacher's  tasks !  She  was  conscientious  in  her 
duties,  and  would  insist  on  reading  every  sen- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  95 

tence,  —  there  was  no  saying  where  she  might 
find  faults  of  grammar  or  bad  spelling.  There 
might  have  been  twenty  or  thirty  of  these  themes 
in  the  bundle  before  her.  Of  course  she  knew 
pretty  well  the  leading  sentiments  they  could  con 
tain  :  that  beauty  was  subject  to  the  accidents 
of  time  ;  that  wealth  was  inconstant,  and  exist 
ence  uncertain  ;  that  virtue  was  its  own  reward  ; 
that  youth  exhaled,  like  the  dewdrop  from  the 
flower,  ere  the  sun  had  reached  its  meridian ;  that 
life  was  o'ershadowed  with  trials  ;  that  the  lessons 
of  virtue  instilled  by  our  beloved  teachers  were  to 
be  our  guides  through  all  our  future  career.  The 
imagery  employed  consisted  principally  of  roses, 
lilies,  birds,  clouds,  and  brooks,  with  the  cele 
brated  comparison  of  wayward  genius  to  a  me 
teor.  Who  does  not  know  the  small,  slanted, 
Italian  hand  of  these  girls'-  compositions,  —  their 
stringing  together  of  the  good  old  traditional 
copy-book  phrases,  their  occasional  gushes  of 
sentiment,  their  profound  estimates  of  the  world, 
sounding  to  the  old  folks  that  read  them  as 
the  experience  of  a  bantam-pullet's  last-hatched 
young  one  with  the  chips  of  its  shell  on  its  head 
would  sound  to  a  Mother  Gary's  chicken,  who 
knew  the  great  ocean  with  all  its  typhoons  and 
tornadoes  ?  Yet  every  now  and  then  one  is  liable 
to  be  surprised  with  strajige  clairvoyant  flashes, 
that  can  hardly  be  explained,  except  by  the  mys 
terious  inspiration  which  every  now  and  then 
seizes  a  young  girl  and  exalts  her  intelligence, 


96  ELSIE  VKXKF.R. 

just  as  hysteria  in  other  instances  exalts  the  sen 
sibility,  —  a  little  something  of  that  which  made 
Joan  of  Arc,  and  the  Barney  girl  who  prophesied 
"  Evelina,"  and  the  Davidson  sisters.  In  the 
midst  of  these  commonplace  exercises  which  Miss 
Darley  read  over  so  carefully  were  two  or  three 
that  had  something  of  individual  flavor  about 
them,  and  here  and  there  there  was  an  image 
or  an  epithet  which  showed  the  footprint  of  a 
passionate  nature,  as  a  fallen  scarlet  feather 
marks  the  path  the  wild  flamingo  has  trodden. 
The  young  lady  teacher  read  them  with  a  cer 
tain  indifference  of  manner,  as  one  reads  proofs, 

—  noting   defects   of  detail,   but   not   commonly 
arrested  by  the  matters  treated  of.     Even    Miss 
Charlotte  Ann  Wood's  poem,  beginning 

"  How  sweet  at  evening's  balmy  hour," 

did  not  excite  her.  She  marked  the  inevitable 
false  rhyme  of  Cockney  and  Yankee  beginners, 
morn  and  dawn,  and  tossed  the  verses  on  the  pile 
of  papers  she  had  finished.  She  was  looking  over 
some  of  the  last  of  them  in  a  rather  listless  way, 

—  for  the  poor  thing  was  getting  sleepy  in  spite  of 
herself,  —  when  she  came  to  one  which   seemed 
to  rouse  her  attention,  and  lifted  her  drooping 
lids.      She  looked    at   it   a    moment   before    she 
would  touch  it.     Then  she  took  hold  of  it  by 
one  corner  and  slid  it  off  from  the  rest.     One 
would  have  said  she  was  afraid  of  it,  or  had  some 
undefined  antipathy  which  made  it  hateful  to  her. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  97 

Such  odd  fancies  are  common  enough  in  young 
persons  in  her  nervous  state.  Many  of  these 
young  people  will  jump  up  twenty  times  a  day 
and  run  to  dabble  the  tips  of  their  fingers  in 
water,  after  touching  the  most  inoffensive  objects. 
This  composition  was  written  in  a  singular, 
sharp-pointed,  long,  slender  hand,  on  a  kind 
of  wavy,  ribbed  paper.  There  was  something 
strangely  suggestive  about  the  look  of  it,  —  but 
exactly  of  what,  Miss  Darley  either  could  not  or 
did  not  try  to  think.  The  subject  of  the  paper 
was  The  Mountain,  —  the  composition  being  a 
sort  of  descriptive  rhapsody.  It  showed  a  start 
ling  familiarity  with  some  of  the  savage  scenery 
of  the  region.  One  would  have  said  that  the 
writer  must  have  threaded  its  wildest  solitudes 
by  the  light  of  the  moon  and  stars  as  well  as  by 
day.  As  the  teacher  read  on,  her  color  changed, 
and  a  kind  of  tremulous  agitation  came  over  her. 
There  were  hints  in  this  strange  paper  she  did  not 
know  what  to  make  of.  There  was  something  in 
its  descriptions  and  imagery  that  recalled,  —  Miss 
Darley  could  not  say  what,  —  but  it  made  her 
frightfully  nervous.  Still  she  could  not  help 
reading,  till  she  came  to  one  passage  which  so 
agitated  her,  that  the  tired  and  overwearied  girl's 
self-control  left  her  entirely.  She  sobbed  once  or 
twice,  then  laughed  convulsively,  and  flung  her 
self  on  the  bed,  where  she  worked  out  a  set  hys 
teric  spasm  as  she  best  might,  without  anybody 
to  rub  her  hands  and  see  that  she  did  not  hurt 


98  ELSIE  VEXNER. 

herself.  By-and-by  she  got  quiet,  rose  and  went 
to  her  book-case,  took  down  a  volume  of  Cole 
ridge,  and  read  a  short  time,  and  so  to  bed,  to 
sleep  and  wake  from  time  to  time  with  a  sudden 
start  out  of  uneasy  dreams. 

Perhaps  it  is  of  no  great  consequence  what  it 
was  in  the  composition  which  set  her  off  into 
this  nervous  paroxysm.  She  was  in  such  a 
state  that  almost  any  slight  agitation  would 
have  brought  on  the  attack,  and  it  was  the  ac 
cident  of  her  transient  excitability,  very  proba 
bly,  which  made  a  trifling  catise  the  seeming  oc 
casion  of  so  much  disturbance.  The  theme  was 
signed,  in  the  same  peculiar,  sharp,  slender  hand, 
E.  Venner^  and  was,  of  course,  written  by  that 
\vi  Id-looking  girl  who  had  excited  the  master's 
curiosity  and  prompted  his  question,  as  before 
mentioned. 

The  next  morning  the  lady-teacher  looked  pale 
and  wearied,  naturally  enough,  but  she  was  in  her 
place  at  the  usual  hour,  and  Master  Langdon 
in  his  own.  The  girls  had  not  yet  entered  the 
school-room. 

"  You  have  been  ill,  I  am  afraid,"  said  Mr. 
Bernard. 

"  I  was  not  well  yesterday,"  she  answered.  "  I 
had  a  worry  and  a  kind  of  fright.  It  is  so  dread 
ful  to  have  the  charge  of  all  these  young  souls 
and  bodies!  Every  young  girl  ought  to  walk, 
locked  close,  arm  in  arm,  between  two  guar 
dian  angels.  Sometimes  I  faint  almost  with 


ELSIE   VENNER.  99 

the  thought  of  all  that  I  ought  to  do,  and  of  my 
own  weakness  and  wants. —  Tell  me,  are  there 
not  natures  born  so  out  of  parallel  with  the  lines 
of  natural  law  that  nothing  short  of  a  miracle  can 
bring  them  right  ?  " 

Mr.  Bernard  had  speculated  somewhat,  as  all 
thoughtful  persons  of  his  profession  are  forced 
to  do,  on  the  innate  organic  tendencies  with 
which  individuals,  families,  and  races  are  born. 
He  replied,  therefore,  with  a  smile,  as  one  to 
whom  the  question  suggested  a  very  familiar 
class  of  facts. 

"  Why,  of  course.  Each  of  us  is  only  the  foot- 
ing-up  of  a  double  column  of  figures  that  goes 
back  to  the  first  pair.  Every  unit  tells, —  and 
some  of  them  are  plus,  and  some  minus.  If  the 
columns  don't  add  up  right,  it  is  commonly  be 
cause  we  can't  make  out  all  the  figures.  I  don't 
mean  to  say  that  something  may  not  be  added 
by  Nature  to  make  up  for  losses  and  keep  the 
race  to  its  average,  but  we  are  mainly  nothing 
but  the  answer  to  a  long  sum  in  addition  and 
subtraction.  No  doubt  there  are  people  born 
with  impulses  at  every  possible  angle  to  the 
parallels  of  Nature,  as  you  call  them.  If  they 
happen  to  cut  these  at  right  angles,  of  course 
they  are  beyond  the  reach  of  common  influ 
ences.  Slight  obliquities  are  what  we  have  most 
to  do  with  in  education.  Penitentiaries  and  in 
sane  asylums  take  care  of  most  of  the  right-angle 
cases.  —  I  am  afraid  I  have  put  it  too  much  like 


100  ELSIE  VENNER. 

a  professor,  and  I  am  only  a  student,  you  know. 
Pray,  what  set  you  to  asking  me  this  ?  Any 
strange  cases  among  the  scholars  ? " 

The  meek  teacher's  blue  eyes  met  the  lumi 
nous  glance  that  came  with  the  question.  She, 
too,  was  of  gentle  blood,  —  not  meaning  by  that 
that  she  was  of  any  noted  lineage,  but  that  she 
came  of  a  cultivated  stock,  never  rich,  but  long 
trained  to  intellectual  callings.  A  thousand  de 
cencies,  amenities,  reticences,  graces,  which  no 
one  thinks  of  until  he  misses  them,  are  the  tra 
ditional  right  of  those  who  spring  from  such 
families.  And  when  two  persons  of  this  excep 
tional  breeding  meet  in  the  midst  of  the  com 
mon  multitude,  they  seek  each  other's  company 
at  once  by  the  natural  law  of  elective  affinity. 
It  is  wonderful  how  men  and  women  know  their 
peers.  \  If  two  stranger  queens,  sole  survivors  of 
two  shipwrecked  vessels,  were  cast,  half-naked, 
on  a  rock  together,  each  would  at  once  address 
the  other  as  "  Our  Royal  Sister."  '/P'  a^-^f 

Helen  Darley  looked  into  the  dark  eyes  of 
Bernard  Langdon  glittering  with  the  light  which' 
flashed  from  them  with  his  question.  Not  as 
those  foolish,  innocent  country-girls  of  the  small 
village  did  she  look  into  them,  to  be  fascinated 
and  bewildered,  but  to  sound  them  with  a  calm, 
steadfast  purpose.  "  A  gentleman,"  she  said  to 
herself,  as  she  read  his  expression  and  his  feat 
ures  with  a  woman's  rapid,  but  exhausting 
glance.  "A  lady,"  he  said  to  himself,  as  he 


ELSIE  VENNER.  101 

met  her  questioning  look,  —  so  brief,  so  quiet, 
yet  so  assured,  as  of  one  whom  necessity  had 
taught  to  read  faces  quickly  without  offence,  as 
children  read  the  faces  of  parents,  as  wives  read 
the  faces  of  hard-souled  husbands.  All  this  was 
but  a  few  seconds'  work,  and  yet  the  main  point 
was  settled.  If  there  had  been  any  vulgar  curi 
osity  or  coarseness  of  any  kind  lurking  in  his  ex 
pression,  she  would  have  detected  it.  If  she  had 
not  lifted  her  eyes  to  his  face  so  softly  and  kept 
them  there  so  calmly  and  withdrawn  them  so 
quietly,  he  would  not  have  said  to  himself, 
"  She  is  a  lady"  for.  that  word  meant  a  good 
deal  to  the  descendant  of  the  courtly  Went- 
worths  and  the  scholarly  Langdons. 

"  There  are  strange  people  everywhere,  Mr. 
Langdon,"  she  said,  "  and  I  don't  think  our 
school-room  is  an  exception.  I  am  glad  you 
believe  in  the  force  of  transmitted  tendencies. 
It  would  break  my  heart,  if  I  did  not  think  that 
there  are  faults  beyond  the  reach  of  everything 
but  God's  special  grace.  I  should  die,  if  I 
thought  that  my  negligence  or  incapacity  was 
alone  responsible  for  the  errors  and  sins  of  those 
I  have  charge  of.  Yet  there  are  mysteries  I  do 
not  know  how  to  account  for."  She  looked  all 
round  the  school-room,  and  then  said,  in  a  whis 
per,  "  Mr.  Langdon,  we  had  a  girl  that  stole,  in 
the  school,  not  long  ago.  Worse  than  that,  we 
had  a  girl  who  tried  to  set  us  on  fire.  Children 
of  good  people,  both  of  them.  And  we  have  a 
girl  now  that  frightens  me  so  " 


102  ELSIE  VENNER. 

The  door  opened,  and  three  misses  came  in  to 
take  their  seats :  three  types,  as  it  happened,  of 
certain  classes,  into  which  it  would  not  have  been 
difficult  to  distribute  the  greater  number*  of  the 
girls  in  the  school.  —  Hannah  Martin.  Four 
teen  years  and  three  months  old.  Short-necked, 
thick-waisted,  round-cheeked,  smooth,  vacant  fore 
head,  large,  dull  eyes.  Looks  good-natured,  with 
little  other  expression.  Three  buns  in  her  bag, 
and  a  large  apple.  Has  a  habit  of  attacking 
her  provisions  in  school-hours. —  Rosa  Mi/burn. 
Sixteen.  Brunette,  with  a  rareripe  flush  in  her 
cheeks.  Color  comes  and  goes  easily.  Eyes 
wandering,  apt  to  be  downcast.  Moody  at 
times.  Said  to  be  passionate,  if  irritated.  Fin 
ished  in  high  relief.  Carries  shoulders  well  back 
and  walks  well,  as  if  proud  of  her  woman's  life, 
with  a  slight  rocking  movement,  being  one  of  the 
wide-flanged  pattern,  but  seems  restless,  —  a  hard 
girl  to  look  after.  Has  a  romance  in  her  pocket, 
which  she  means  to  read  in  school-time.  —  Char 
lotte  Ann  Wood.  Fifteen.  The  poetess  before 
mentioned.  Long,  light  ringlets,  pallid  com 
plexion,  blue  eyes.  Delicate  child,  half  unfold 
ed.  Gentle,  but  languid  and  despondent.  Does 
not  go  much  with  the  other  girls,  but  reads  a 
good  deal,  especially  poetry,  underscoring  favor 
ite  passages.  Writes  a  great  many  verses,  very 
fast,  not  very  correctly ;  full  of  the  usual  human 
sentiments,  expressed  in  the  accustomed  phrases. 
Undervitalized.  Sensibilities  not  covered  with 


ELSIE  VENNER.  103 

their  normal  integuments.  A  negative  condi 
tion,  often  confounded  with  genius,  and  some 
times  running  into  it.  Young  people  who  fall 
out  of  line  through  weakness  of  the  active  facul 
ties  are  often  confounded  with  those  who  step  out 
of  it  through  strength  of  the  intellectual  ones. 

The  girls  kept  coming  in,  one  after  another,  or 
in  pairs  or  groups,  until  the  school-room  was 
nearly  full.  Then  there  was  a  little  pause,  and  a 
light  step  was  heard  in  the  passage.  The  lady- 
teacher's  eyes  turned  to  the  door,  and  the  master's 
followed  them  in  the  same  direction. 

A  girl  of  about  seventeen  entered.  She  was 
tall  and  slender,  but  rounded,  with  a  peculiar  un 
dulation  of  movement,  such  as  one  sometimes 
sees  in  perfectly  untutored  country-girls,  whom 
Nature,  the  queen  of  graces,  has  taken  in  hand, 
but  more  commonly  in  connection  with  the  very 
highest  breeding  of  the  most  thoroughly  trained 
society.  She  was  a  splendid  scowling  beauty, 
black-browed,  with  a  flash  of  white  teeth  which 
was  always  like  a  surprise  when  her  lips  parted. 
She  wore  a  checkered  dress,  of  a  curious  pattern, 
and  a  camel's-hair  scarf  twisted  a  little  fantasti 
cally  about  her.  She  went  to  her  seat,  which  she 
had  moved  &  short  distance  apart  from  the  rest, 
and,  sitting  down,  began  playing  listlessly  with 
her  gold  chain,  as  was  a  common  habit  with  her, 
coiling  it  and  uncoiling  it  about  her  slender  wrist, 
and  braiding  it  in  with  her  long,  delicate  fingers. 
Presently  she  looked  up.  Black,  piercing  eyes,  not 


104  ELSIE  VENNER. 

large,  —  a  low  forehead,  as  low  as  that  of  Clytie 
in  the  Townley  bust,  —  black  hair,  twisted  in 
heavy  braids,  —  a  face  that  one  could  not  help 
looking  at  for  its  beauty,  yet  that  one  wanted  to 
look  away  from  for  something  in  its  expression, 
and  could  not  for  those  diamond  eyes.  They 
were  fixed  on  the  lady-teacher  now.  The  latter 
turned  her  own  away,  and  let  them  wander  over 
the  other  scholars.  But  they  could  not  help  com 
ing  back  again  for  a  single  glance  at  the  wild 
beauty.  The  diamond  eyes  were  on  her  still. 
She  turned  the  leaves  of  several  of  her  books,  as 
if  in  search  of  some  passage,  and,  when  she 
thought  she  had  waited  long  enough  to  be  safe, 
once  more  stole  a  quick  iook  at  the  dark  girl. 
The  diamond  eyes  were  still  upon  her.  She  put 
her  kerchief  to  her  forehead,  which  had  grown 
slightly  moist;  she  sighed  once,  almost  shivered, 
for  she  felt  cold  ;  then,  following  some  ill-defined 
impulse,  which  she  could  not  resist,  she  left  her 
place  and  went  to  the  young  girl's  desk. 

"  What  do  you  want  of  me,  Elsie  Venner  ?  "  It 
was  a  strange  question  to  put,  for  the  girl  had 
not  signified  that  she  wished  the  teacher  to  come 
to  her. 

"  Nothing,"  she  said.  "  I  thought  I  could  make 
you  come."  The  girl  spoke  in  a  low  tone,  a  kind 
of  half-whisper.  She  did  not  lisp,  yet  her  articu 
lation  of  one  or  two  consonants  was  not  abso 
lutely  perfect, 

"  Where  did  you  get  that  flower,  Elsie  ?  "  said 


ELSIE  VENNER.  105 

Miss  Darley.  It  was  a  rare  alpine  flower,  which 
was  found  only  in  one  spot  among  the  rocks  of 
The  Mountain. 

"  Where  it  grew,"  said  Elsie  Venner.  "  Take 
it."  The  teacher  could  not  refuse  her.  The  girl's 
finger-tips  touched  hers  as  she  took  it.  How  cold 
they  were  for  a  girl  of  such  an  organization ! 

The  teacher  went  back  to  her  seat.  She  made 
an  excuse  for  quitting  the  school-room  soon  after 
wards.  The  first  thing  she  did  was  to  fling  the 
flower  into  her  fireplace  and  rake  the  ashes  over 
it.  The  second  was  to  wash  the  tips  of  her  fin 
gers,  as  if  she  had  been  another  Lady  Macbeth. 
A  poor,  overtasked,  nervous  creature,  —  we  must 
not  think  too  much  of  her  fancies. 

After  school  was  done,  she  finished  the  talk 
with  the  master  which  had  been  so  suddenly  in 
terrupted.  There  were  things  spoken  of  which 
may  prove  interesting  by-and-by,  but  there  are 
other  matters  we  must  first  attend  to. 


106  ELSIE  VENNK1J. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    EVENT    OF    THE    SEASON. 

"  MR.  and  Mrs.  Colonel  Sprowle's  compliments 
to  Mr.  Langdon  and  requests  the  pleasure  of  his 
company  at  a  social  entertainment  on  Wednesday 
evening  next. 

"  Elm  St.     Monday." 

On  paper  of  a  pinkish  color  and  musky  smell, 
with  a  large  <S  at  the  top,  and  an  embossed  bor 
der.  Envelop  adherent,  not  sealed.  Addressed, 

Langdon  Esq. 

Present. 

Brought  by  H.  Frederic  Sprowle,  youngest  son 
of  the  Colonel, — the  H.  of  course  standing  for  the 
paternal  Hezekiah,  put  in  to  please  the  father,  and 
reduced  to  its  initial  to  please  the  mother,  she 
having  a  marked  preference  for  Frederic.  Boy 
directed  to  wait  for  an  answer. 

"  Mr.  Langdon  has  the  pleasure  of  accepting 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Colonel  Sprowle's  polite  invitation 
for  Wednesday  evening." 

On  plain  paper,  sealed  with  an  initial. 


ELSIE  TENNER.  107 

In  walking  along  the  main  street,  Mr.  Bernard 
had  noticed  a  large  house  of  some  pretensions  to 
architectural  display,  namely,  unnecessarily  p^p- 
jecting  eaves,  giving  it  a  mushroomy  aspect, 
wooden  mouldings  at  various  available  points, 
and  a  grandiose  arched  portico.  It  looked  a  little 
swaggering  by  the  side  of  one  or  two  of  the  man 
sion-houses  that  were  not  far  from  it,  was  painted 
too  bright  for  Mr.  Bernard's  taste,  had  rather  too 
fanciful  a  fence  before  it,  and  had  some  fruit-trees 
planted  in  the  front-yard,  which  to  this  fastidious 
young  gentleman  implied  a  defective  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things,  not  promising  in  people  who 
lived  in  so  large  a  house,  with  a  mushroom  roof 
and  a  triumphal  arch  for  its  entrance. 

This  place  was  known  as  "  Colonel  Sprowle's 
villa,"  (genteel  friends,)  —  as  "  the  elegant  resi 
dence  of  our  distinguished  fellow-citizen,  Colonel 
Sprowle,"  (Rockland  Weekly  Universe,)  —  as  "  the 
neew  haouse,"  (old  settlers,)  —  as  "  Spraowle's 
Folly,"  (disaffected  and  possibly  envious  neigh 
bors,) —  and  in  common  discourse,  as  "the  Colo 
nel's." 

Hezekiah  Sprowle,  Esquire,  Colonel  Sprowle 
of  the  Commonwealth's  Militia,  was  a  retired 
"  merchant."  An  India  merchant  he  might,  per 
haps,  have  been  properly  called ;  for  he  used  to 
deal  in  West  India  goods,  such  as  coffee,  sugar, 
and  molasses,  not  to  speak  of  rum,  —  also  in  tea, 
salt  fish,  butter  and  cheese,  oil  and  candles,  dried 
fruit,  agricultural  "  p'doose  "  generally,  industrial 


108  ELSIE  VENNER. 

products,  such  as  boots  and  shoes,  and  various 
kinds  of  iron  and  wooden  ware,  and  at  one  end 
o4  the  establishment  in  calicoes  and  other  stuffs, 
—  to  say  nothing  of  miscellaneous  objects  of  the 
most  varied  nature,  from  sticks  of  candy,  which 
tempted  in  the  smaller  youth  with  coppers  in 
their  fists,  up  to  ornamental  articles  of  apparel, 
pocket-books,  breast-pins,  gilt-edged  Bibles,  sta 
tionery, —  in  short,  everything  which  was  like  to 
prove  seductive  to  the  rural  population.  The 
Colonel  had  made  money  in  trade,  and  also  by 
matrimony.  He  had  married  Sarah,  daughter 
and  heiress  of  the  late  Tekel  Jordan,  Esq.,  an  old 
miser,  who  gave  the  town-clock,  which  carries  his 
name  to  posterity  in  large  gilt  letters  as  a  gener 
ous  benefactor  of  his  native  place.  In  due  time 
the  Colonel  reaped  the  reward  of  well-placed  af 
fections.  When  his  wife's  inheritance  fell  in,  he 
thought  he  had  money  enough  to  give  up  trade, 
and  therefore  sold  out  his  "  store,"  called  in  some 
dialects  of  the  English  language  shop,  and  his 
business. 

Life  became  pretty  hard  work  to  him,  of  course, 
as  soon  as  he  had  nothing  particular  to  do.  Coun 
try  people  with  money  enough  not  to  have  to 
work  are  in  much  more  danger  than  city  people 
in  the  same  condition.  They  get  a  specific  look 
and  character,  which  are  the  same  in  all  the  vil 
lages  where  one  studies  them.  They  very  com 
monly  fall  into  a  routine,  the  basis  of  which  is 
going  to  some  lounging-place  or  other,  a  bar-room, 


ELSIE   YEXXEK.  109 

a  reading-room,  or  something  of  the  kind.  They 
grow  slovenly  in  dress,  and  wear  the  same  hat  for 
ever.  They  have  a  feeble  curiosity  for  news  per 
haps,  which  they  take  daily  as  a  man  takes  his 
bitters,  and  then  fall  silent  and  think  they  are 
thinking.  But  the  mind  goes  out  under  this  regi 
men,  like  a  fire  without  a  draught ;  and  it  is  not 
very  strange,  if  the  instinct  of  mental  self-preser 
vation  drives  them  to  brandy-and-water,  which 
makes  the  hoarse  whisper  of  memory  musical  for 
a  few  brief  moments,  and  puts  a  weak  leer  of 
promise  on  the  features  of  the  hollow-eyed  future. 
The  Colonel  was  kept  pretty  well  in  hand  as  yet 
by  his  wife,  and  though  it  had  happened  to  him 
once  or  twice  to  come  home  rather  late  at  night 
with  a  curious  tendency  to  say  the  same  thing 
twice  and  even  three  times  over,  it  had  always 
been  in  very  cold  weather,  —  and  everybody 
knows  that  no  one  is  safe  to  drink  a  couple  of 
glasses  of  wine  in  a  warm  room  and  go  suddenly 
out  into  the  cold  air. 

Miss  Matilda  Sprowle,  sole  daughter  of  the 
house,  had  reached  the  age  at  which  young  ladies 
are  supposed  in  technical  language  to  have  come 
out,  and  thereafter  are  considered  to  be  in  com 
pany. 

"  There's  one  piece  o'  goods,"  said  the  Colonel 
to  his  wife,  "  that  we  ha' n't  disposed  of,  nor  got  a 
customer  for  yet.  That's  Matildy.  I  don't  mean 
to  set  her  up  at  vaandoo.  I  guess  she  can  have 
her  pick  of  a  dozen." 


110  ELSIE  VENXER. 

"  She  's  never  seen  anybody  yet,"  said  Mrs. 
Sprowle,  who  had  had  a  certain  project  for  some 
time,  but  had  kept  quiet  about  it.  "  Let 's  have  a 
party,  and  give  her  a  chance  to  show  herself  and 
see  some  of  the  young  folks." 

The  Colonel  was  not  very  clear-headed,  and  he 
thought,  naturally  enough,  that  the  party  was  his 
own  suggestion,  because  his  remark  led  to  the 
first  starting  of  the  idea.  He  entered  into  the 
plan,  therefore,  with  a  feeling  of  pride  as  well  as 
pleasure,  and  the  great  project  was  resolved  upon 
in  a  family  council  without  a  dissentient  voice. 
This  was  the  party,  then,  to  which  Mr.  Bernard 
was  going.  The  town  had  been  full  of  it  for  a 
week.  "Everybody  was  asked."  So  everybody 
said  that  was  invited.  But  how  in  respect  of 
those  who  were  not  asked  ?  If  it  had  been  one 
of  the  old  mansion-houses  that  was  giving  a 
party,  the  boundary  between  the  favored  and  the 
slighted  families  would  have  been  known  pretty 
well  beforehand,  and  there  would  have  been  no 
great  amount  of  grumbling.  But  the  Colonel, 
for  all  his  title,  had  a  forest  of  poor  relations  and 
a  brushwood  swamp  of  shabby  friends,  for  he  had 
scrambled  up  to  fortune,  and  now  the  time  was 
come  when  he  must  define  his  new  social  posi 
tion. 

This  is  always  an  awkward  business  in  town 
or  country.  An  exclusive  alliance  between  two 
powers  is  often  the  same  thing  as  a  declaration 
of  war  against  a  third.  Rockland  was  soon 


ELSIE  VENNER.  Ill 

split  into  a  triumphant  minority,  invited  to  Mrs. 
Sprowle's  party,  and  a  great  majority,  uninvited, 
of  which  the  fraction  just  on  the  border  line  be 
tween  recognized  "  gentility  "  and  the  level  of  the 
ungloved  masses  was  in  an  active  state  of  excite 
ment  and  indignation. 

"  Who  is  she,  I  should  like  to  know  ? "  said 
Mrs.  Saymore,  the  tailor's  wife.  "  There  was 
plenty  of  folks  in  Rockland  as  good  as  ever  Sally 
Jordan  was,  if  she  had  managed  to  pick  up  a  mer 
chant.  Other  folks  could  have  married  merchants, 
if  their  families  wasn't  as  wealthy  as  them  old 
skinflints  that  willed  her  their  money,"  etc.  etc. 
Mrs.  Saymore  expressed  the  feeling  of  many  be 
side  herself.  She  had,  however,  a  special  right  to 
be  proud  of  the  name  she  bore.  Her  husband  was 
own  cousin  to  the  Saymores  of  Freestone  Ave 
nue  (who  write  the  name  Seymour,  and  claim  to 
be  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset's  family,  showing  a 
clear  descent  from  the  Protector  to  Edward  Sey 
mour,  (1630,)  —  then  a  jump  that  would  break  a 
herald's  neck  to  one  Seth  Saymore,  (1783,)  — 
from  whom  to  the  head  of  the  present  family  the 
line  is  clear  again).  Mrs.  Saymore,  the  tailor's 
wife,  was  not  invited,  because  her  husband  mended 
clothes.  If  he  had  confined  himself  strictly  to 
making'  them,  it  would  have  put  a  different  face 
upon  the  matter. 

The  landlord  of  the  Mountain  House  and  his 
lady  were  invited  to  Mrs.  Sprowle's  party.  Not 
so  the  landlord  of  Pollard's  Tahvern  and  his  lady. 


112  ELSIE  VENNER. 

Whereupon  the  latter  vowed  that  they  would 
have  a  party  at  their  house  too,  and  made  ar 
rangements  for  a  dance  of  twenty  or  thirty  couples, 
to  be  followed  by  an  entertainment.  Tickets  to 
this  "  Social  Ball"  were  soon  circulated,  and, 
being  accessible  to  all  at  a  moderate  price,  ad 
mission  to  the  "  Elegant  Supper  "  included,  this 
second  festival  promised  to  be  as  merry,  if  not  as 
select,  as  the  great  party. 

Wednesday  came.  Such  doings  had  never 
been  heard  of  in  Rockland  as  went  on  that  day 
at  the  "  villa."  The  carpet  had  been  taken  up  in 
the  long  room,  so  that  the  young  folks  might  have 
a  dance.  Miss  Matilda's  piano  had  been  moved 
in,  and  two  fiddlers  and  a  clarionet-player  en 
gaged  to  make  music.  All  kinds  of  lamps  had 
been  put  in  requisition,  and  even  colored  wax- 
candles  figured  on  the  mantel-pieces.  The  cos 
tumes  of  the  family  had  been  tried  on  the  day 
before :  the  Colonel's  black  suit  fitted  exceedingly 
well ;  his  lady's  velvet  dress  displayed  her  con 
tours  to  advantage  ;  Miss  Matilda's  flowered  silk 
was  considered  superb ;  the  eldest  son  of  the  fam 
ily,  Mr.  T.  Jordan  Sprowle,  called  affectionately 
and  elegantly  "  Geordie,"  voted  himself  "  stun- 
nin'  "  ;  and  even  the  small  youth  who  had  borne 
Mr.  Bernard's  invitation  was  effective  in  a  new 
jacket  and  trousers,  buttony  in  front,  and  baggy 
in  the  reverse  aspect,  as  is  wont  to  be  the  case 
with  the  home-made  garments  of  inland  young 
sters. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  113 

Great  preparations  had  been  made  for  the  re 
fection  which  was  to  be  part  of  the  entertain 
ment.  There  was  much  clinking  of  borrowed 
spoons,  which  were  to  be  carefully  counted,  and 
much  clicking  of  borrowed  china,  which  was  to 
be  tenderly  handled,  —  for  nobody  in  the  country 
keeps  those  vast  closets  full  of  such  things  which 
one  may  see  in  rich  city-houses.  Not  a  great 
deal  could  be  done  in  the  way  of  flowers,  for 
there  were  no  green-houses,  and  few  plants  were 
out  as  yet ;  but  there  were  paper  ornaments 
for  the  candlesticks,  and  colored  mats  for  the 
lamps,  and  all  the  tassels  of  the  curtains  and  bells 
were  taken  out  of  those  brown  linen  bags,  in 
which,  for  reasons  hitherto  undiscovered,  they  are 
habitually  concealed  in  some  households.  In  the 
remoter  apartments  every  imaginable  operation 
was  going  on  at  once,  —  roasting,  boiling,  bak 
ing,  beating,  rolling,  pounding  in  mortars,  frying, 
freezing ;  for  there  was  to  be  ice-cream  to-night 
of  domestic  manufacture  ;  —  and  in  the  midst  of 
all  these  labors,  Mrs.  Sprowle  and  Miss  Matilda 
were  moving  about,  directing  and  helping  as  they 
best  might,  all  day  long.  When  the  evening 
came,  it  might  be  feared  they  would  not  be  in 
just  the  state  of  mind  and  body  to  entertain 
company. 

One  would  like  to  give  a  party  now  and 

then,  if  one  could  be  a  billionnaire.  —  "  Antoine, 
I  am  going  to  have  twenty  people  to  dine  to 
day."  "  Bien,  Madame"  Not  a  word  or  thought 

VOL.   I.  8 


114  ELSIE  VENXER. 

more  about  it,  but  get  home  in  season  to  dress, 
and  come  down  to  your  own  table,  one  of  your 
own  guests. —  "  Giuseppe,  we  are  to  have  a  party 
a  week  from  to-night,  —  five  hundred  invitations, 

—  there  is  the  list."     The  day  comes.    "  Madam, 
do  you  remember  you  have  your  party  to-night?  " 
"  Why,  so  I  have !    Everything  right?  supper  and 
all  ?  "    "  All  as  it  should  be,  Madam."    "  Send  up 
Victorine."     "  Victorine,  full  toilet  for  this  even 
ing,  —  pink,  diamonds,  and  emeralds.      Coiffeur 
at  seven.     Allez"  —  Billionism,  or  even  million- 
ism,  must  be  a  blessed  kind  of  state,  with  health 
and  clear  conscience  and  youth  and  good  looks, 

—  but  most  blessed  in  this,  that  it  takes  off  all 
the  mean  cares  which  give  people  the  three  wrin 
kles  between  the  eyebrows,  and  leaves  them  free 
to  have  a  good  time  and   make  others  have   a 
good  time,  all  the  way  along  from  the   charity 
that  tips  up  unexpected  loads  of   wood   before 
widows'   houses,   and    leaves   foundling   turkeys 
upon  poor  men's  door-steps,  and  sets  lean  clergy 
men  crying  at  the  sight  of  anonymous  fifty-dollar 
bills,  to  the  taste  which  orders  a  perfect  banquet 
in  such  sweet  accord  with  every  sense  that  every 
body's  nature  flowers  out  full-blown  in  its  golden- 
glowing,  fragrant  atmosphere. 

A  great  party  given  by  the  smaller  gentry 

of  the  interior  is  a  kind  of  solemnity,  so  to  speak. 
It  involves  so  much  labor  and  anxiety,  —  its  spas 
modic  splendors  are  so  violently  contrasted  with 
the  homeliness  of  every-day  family-life,  —  it  is 


ELSIE  VEXNER.  115 

such  a  formidable  matter  to  break  in  the  raw 
subordinates  to  the  manege  of  the  cloak-room  and 
the  table,  —  there  is  such  a  terrible  uncertainty  in 
the  results  of  unfamiliar  culinary  operations,  —  so 
many  feuds  are  involved  in  drawing  that  fatal 
line  which  divides  the  invited  from  the  uninvited 
fraction  of  the  local  universe,  —  that,  if  the  notes 
requested  the  pleasure  of  the  guests'  company  on' 
"  this  solemn  occasion,"  they  would  pretty  nearly 
express  the  true  state  of  things. 

The  Colonel  himself  had  been  pressed  into  the 
service.  He  had  pounded  something  in  the  great 
mortar.  He  had  agitated  a  quantity  of  sweet 
ened  and  thickened  milk  in  what  was  called  a 
cream-freezer.  At  eleven  o'clock,  A.  M.,  he  retired 
for  a  space.  On  returning,  his  color  was  noted 
to  be  somewhat  heightened,  and  he  showed  a  dis 
position  to  be  jocular  with  the  female  help, — 
which  tendency,  displaying  itself  in  livelier  dem 
onstrations  than  were  approved  at  head-quarters, 
led  to  his  being  detailed  to  out-of-door  duties, 
such  as  raking  gravel,  arranging  places  for  horses 
to  be  hitched  to,  and  assisting  in  the  construction 
of  an  arch  of  winter-green  at  the  porch  of  the 
mansion. 

A  whiff  from  Mr.  Geordie's  cigar  refreshed  the 
toiling  females  from  time  to  time  ;  for  the  win 
dows  had  to  be  opened  occasionally,  while  all  these 
operations  were  going  on,  and  the  youth  amused 
himself  with  inspecting  the  interior,  encouraging 
the  operatives  now  and  then  in  the  phrases  com- 


116  ELSIE  TENNER. 

monly  employed  by  genteel  young  men,  —  for  he 
had  perused  an  odd  volume  of  "  Verdant  Green," 
and  was  acquainted  with  a  Sophomore  from  one 
of  the  fresh-water  colleges.  — "  Go  it  on  the  feed  !  " 
exclaimed  this  spirited  young  man.  "  Nothin'  like 
a  good  spread.  Grub  enough  and  good  liquor ; 
that's  the  ticket.  Guv'nor'll  do  the  heavy  po 
lite,  and  let  me  alone  for  polishin'  off  the  young 
charmers."  And  Mr.  Geordie  looked  expressively 
at  a  handmaid  who  was  rolling  gingerbread,  as  if 
he  were  rehearsing  for  "  Don  Giovanni." 

Evening  came  at  last,  and  the  ladies  were 
forced  to  leave  the  scene  of  their  labors  to  array 
themselves  for  the  coming  festivities.  The  tables 
had  been  set  in  a  back  room,  the  meats  were 
ready,  the  pickles  were  displayed,  the  cake  was 
baked,  the  blanc-mange  had  stiffened,  and  the 
ice-cream  had  frozen. 

At  half  past  seven  o'clock,  the  Colonel,  in  cos 
tume,  came  into  the  front  parlor,  and  proceeded 
to  light  the  lamps.  Some  were  good-humored 
enough  and  took  the  hint  of  a  lighted  match  at 
once.  Others  were  as  vicious  as  they  could  be, — 
would  not  light  on  any  terms,  any  more  than  if 
they  were  filled  with  water,  or  lighted  and  smoked 
one  side  of  the  chimney,  or  sputtered  a  few  sparks 
and  sulked  themselves  out,  or  kept  up  a  faint 
show  of  burning,  so  that  their  ground  glasses 
looked  as  feebly  phosphorescent  as  so  many  inva 
lid  fireflies.  With  much  coaxing  and  screwing 
and  pricking,  a  tolerable  illumination  was  at  last 


ELSIE  VENNER.  117 

achieved.  At  eight  there  was  a  grand  rustling  of 
silks,  and  Mrs.  and  Miss  Sprowle  descended  from 
their  respective  bowers  or  boudoirs.  Of  course 
they  were  pretty  well  tired  by  this  time,  and  very 
glad  to  sit  down,  —  having  the  prospect  before 
them  of  being  obliged  to  stand  for  hours.  The 
Colonel  walked  about  the  parlor,  inspecting  his 
regiment  of  lamps.  By-and-by  Mr.  Geordie  en 
tered. 

"  Mph !  mph ! "  he  sniffed,  as  he  came  in. 
"  You  smell  of  lamp-smoke  here." 

That  always  galls  people,  —  to  have  a  new 
comer  accuse  them  of  smoke  or  close  air,  which 
they  have  got  used  to  and  do  not  perceive.  The 
Colonel  raged  at  the  thought  of  his  lamps'  smok 
ing,  and  tongued  a  few  anathemas  inside  of  his 
shut  teeth,  but  turned  down  two  or  three  that 
burned  higher  than  the  rest. 

Master  H.  Frederic  next  made  his  appearance, 
with  questionable  marks  upon  his  fingers  and 
countenance.  Had  been  tampering  with  some 
thing  brown  and  sticky.  His  elder  brother  grew 
playful,  and  caught  him  by  the  baggy  reverse  of 
his  more  essential  garment. 

"  Hush  !  "  said  Mrs.  Sprowle,  —  "  there's  the 
bell !  " 

Everybody  took  position  at  once,  and  began  to 
look  very  smiling  and  altogether  at  ease.  —  False 
alarm.  Only  a  parcel  of  spoons, — "loaned,"  as 
the  inland  folks  say  when  they  mean  lent,  by  a 
neighbor. 


118  ELSIE  VENNER. 

"  Better  late  than  never  !  "  said  the  Colonel ; 
"  let  me  heft  them  spoons." 

Mrs.  Sprowle  came  down  into  her  chair  again 
as  if  all  her  bones  had  been  bewitched  out  of  her. 

"  I'm  pretty  nigh  beat  out  a'ready,"  said  she, 
"  before  any  of  the  folks  has  come." 

They  sat  silent  awhile,  waiting  for  the  first 
arrival.  How  nervous  they  got !  and  how  their 
senses  were  sharpened! 

"Hark!"  said  Miss  Matilda,  — "  what's  that 
rumblin' !  " 

It  was  a  cart  going  over  a  bridge  more  than  a 
mile  off,  which  at  any  other  time  they  would  not 
have  heard.  After  this  there  was  a  lull,  and  poor 
Mrs.  Sprowle's  head  nodded  once  or  twice.  Pres 
ently  a  crackling  and  grinding  of  gravel ;  —  how 
much  that  means,  when  we  are  waiting  for  those 
whom  we  long  or  dread  to  see  !  Then  a  change 
in  the  tone  of  the  gravel-crackling. 

"  Yes,  they  have  turned  in  at  our  gate.  They're 
comin' !  Mother !  mother !  " 

Everybody  in  position,  smiling  and  at  ease. 
Bell  rings.  Enter  the  first  set  of  visitors.  The 
Event  of  the  Season  has  begun. 

"  Law  !  it's  nothin'  but  the  Cranes'  folks  !  I 
do  believe  Mahala's  come  in  that  old  green  de 
laine  she  wore  at  the  Surprise  Party ! " 

Miss  Matilda  had  peeped  through  a  crack  of 
the  door  and  made  this  observation  and  the  re 
mark  founded  thereon.  Continuing  her  attitude 
of  attention,  she  overheard  Mrs.  Crane  and  her 


ELSIE  VENNER.  119 

two  daughters  conversing  in  the  attiring-room,  up 
one  flight. 

"  How  fine  everything  is  in  the  great  house !  " 
said  Mrs.  Crane,  —  "  jest  look  at  the  picters !  " 

"  Matildy  Sprowle's  drawins,"  said  Ada  Azuba, 
the  eldest  daughter. 

"  I  should  think  so,"  said  Mahala  Crane,  her 
younger  sister,  —  a  wide-awake  girl,  who  hadn't 
been  to  school  for  nothing,  and  performed  a  little 
on  the  lead  pencil  herself.  "  I  should  like  to  know 
whether  that's  a  hay-cock  or  a  mountain!" 

Miss  Matilda  winced ;  for  this  must  refer  to 
her  favorite  monochrome,  executed  by  .laying  on 
heavy  shadows  and  stumping  them  down  into 
mellow  harmony,  —  the  style  of  drawing  which 
is  taught  in  six  lessons,  and  the  kind  of  specimen 
which  is  executed  in  something  less  than  one 
hour.  Parents  and  other  very  near  relatives  are 
sometimes  gratified  with  these  productions,  and 
cause  them  to  be  framed  and  hung  up,  as  in  the 
present  instance. 

"  I  guess  we  won't  go  down  jest  yet,"  said  Mrs. 
Crane,  "  as  folks  don't  seem  to  have  come." 

So  she  began  a  systematic  inspection  of  the 
dressing-room  and  its  conveniences. 

"  Mahogany  four-poster,  —  come  from  the  Jor- 
dans',  I  cal'late.  Marseilles  quilt.  Ruffles  all 
round  the  piller.  Chintz  curtings,  — jest  put  up, 
—  o'  purpose  for  the  party,  I'll  lay  ye  a  dollar.  — 
What  a  nice  washbowl !  "  (Taps  it  with  a  white 
knuckle  belonging  to  a  red  finger.)  "  Stone  cha- 


120  ELSIE  VENNER. 

ney.  —  Here's  a  bran' -new  brush  and  comb, —  and 
here's  a  scent-bottle.  Come  here,  girls,  and  fix 
yourselves  in  the  glass,  and  scent  your  pocket- 
handkerchers." 

And  Mrs.  Crane  bedewed  her  own  kerchief 
with  some  of  the  eau  de  Cologne  of  native  man 
ufacture,  —  said  on  its  label  to  be  much  superior 
to  the  German  article. 

It  was  a  relief  to  Mrs.  and  the  Miss  Cranes 
when  the  bell  rang  and  the  next  guests  were 
admitted.  Deacon  and  Mrs.  Soper,  —  Deacon 
Soper  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Fairweather's  church,  and 
his  lady. .  Mrs.  Deacon  Soper  was  directed,  of 
course,  to  the  ladies'  dressing-room,  and  her  hus 
band  to  the  other  apartment,  where  gentlemen 
were  to  leave  their  outside  coats  and  hats.  Then 
came  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Briggs,  and  then  the  three 
Miss  Spinneys,  then  Silas  Peckham,  Head  of 
the  Apollinean  Institute,  and  Mrs.  Peckham,  and 
more  after  them,  until  at  last  the  ladies'  dressing- 
room  got  so  full  that  one  might  have  thought  it 
was  a  trap  none  of  them  could  get  out  of.  In 
truth,  they  all  felt  a  little  awkwardly.  Nobody 
wanted  to  be  first  to  venture  down-stairs.  At  last 
Mr.  Silas  Peckham  thought  it  was  time  to  make 
a  move  for  the  parlor,  and  for  this  purpose  pre 
sented  himself  at  the  door  of  the  ladies'  dressing- 
room. 

"  Lorindy,  my  dear!"  he  exclaimed  to  Mrs. 
Peckham, — "  I  think  there  can  be  no  impropriety 
in  our  joining  the  family  down-stairs." 


ELSIE  VEXXER.  121 

Mrs.  Peckham  laid  her  large,  flaccid  arm  in  the 
sharp  angle  made  by  the  black  sleeve  which  held 
the  bony  limb  her  husband  offered,  and  the  two 
took  the  stair  and  struck  out  for  the  parlor.  The 
ice  was  broken,  and  the  dressing-room  began  to 
empty  itself  into  the  spacious,  lighted  apartments 
below. 

Mr.  Silas  Peckham  scaled  into  the  room  with 
Mrs.  Peckham  alongside,  like  a  shad  convoying 
a  jelly-fish. 

"  Good  evenin',  Mrs.  Sprowle !  I  hope  I  see 
you  well  this  evenin'.  How's  your  haalth,  Col 
onel  Sprowle  ?  " 

"  Very  well,  much  obleeged  to  you.  Hope  you 
and  your  good  lady  are  well.  Much  pleased  to 
see  you.  Hope  you'll  enjoy  yourselves.  We've 
laid  out  to  have  everything  in  good  shape,  — 
spared  no  trouble  nor  ex" 


"  pense,"  —  said  Silas  Peckham. 


Mrs.  Colonel  Sprowle,  who,  you  remember, 
was  a  Jordan,  had  nipped  the  Colonel's  state 
ment  in  the  middle  of  the  word  Mr.  Peckham 
finished,  with  a  look  that  jerked  him  like  one 
of  those  sharp  twitches  women  keep  giving  a 
horse  when  they  get  a  chance  to  drive  one. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Crane,  Miss  Ada  Azuba,  and 
Miss  Mahala  Crane  made  their  entrance.  There 
had  been  a  discussion  about  the  necessity  and 
propriety  of  inviting  this  family,  the  head  of 
which  kept  a  small  shop  for  hats  and  boots  and 
shoes.  The  Colonel's  casting  vote  had  carried 


122  ELSIE  VENNER. 

it  in  the  affirmative.  —  How  terribly  the  poor  old 
green  de-laine  did  cut  up  in  the  blaze  of  so  many 
lamps  and  candles. 

Deluded  little  wretch,  male  or  female,  in 

town  or  country,  going  to  your  first  great  party, 
how  little  you  know  the  nature  of  the  ceremony 
in  which  you  are  to  bear  the  part  of  victim! 
What!  are  not  these  garlands  and  gauzy  mists 
and  many-colored  streamers  which  adorn  you,  is 
not  this  music  which  welcomes  you,  this  radi 
ance  that  glows  about  you,  meant  solely  for  your 
enjoyment,  young  miss  of  seventeen  or  eighteen 
summers,  now  for  the  first  time  swimming  into 
the  frothy,  chatoyant,  sparkling,  undulating  sea 
of  laces  and  silks  and  satins,  and  white-armed, 
flower-crowned  maidens  struggling  in  their  waves, 
beneath  the  lustres  that  make  the  false  summer 
of  the  drawing-room? 

Stop  at  the  threshold!  This  is  a  hall  of  judg 
ment  you  are  entering ;  the  court  is  in  session ; 
and  if  you  move  five  steps  forward,  you  will  be 
at  its  bar. 

There  was  a  tribunal  once  in  France,  as  you 
may  remember,  called  the  Chambre  Ardente,  the 
Burning  Chamber.  It  was  hung  all  round  with 
lamps,  and  hence  its  name.  The  burning  cham 
ber  for  the  trial  of  young  maidens  is  the  blazing 
ball-room.  What  have  they  full-dressed  you,  or 
rather  half-dressed  you  for,  do  you  think?  To 
make  you  look  pretty,  of  course !  —  Why  have 
they  hung  a  chandelier  above  you,  flickering  all 


ELSIE  VENNER.  123 

over  with  flames,  so  that  it  searches  you  like  the 
noonday  sun,  and  your  deepest  dimple  cannot 
hold  a  shadow  ?  To  give  brilliancy  to  the  gay 
scene,  no  doubt !  —  No,  my  dear  !  Society  is  in 
specting  you,  and  it  finds  undisguised  surfaces 
and  strong  lights  a  convenience  in  the  process. 
The  dance  answers  the  purpose  of  the  revolving 
pedestal  upon  which  the  "  White  Captive  "  turns, 
to  show  us  the  soft,  kneaded  marble,  which  looks 
as  if  it  had  never  been  hard,  in  all  its  manifold 
aspects  of  living  loveliness.  No  mercy  for  you, 
my  love !  Justice,  strict  justice,  you  shall  cer 
tainly  have,  —  neither  more  nor  less.  For,  look 
you,  there  are  dozens,  scores,  hundreds,  with 
whom  you  must  be  weighed  in  the  balance ; 
and  you  have  got  to  learn  that  the  "  struggle 
for  life  "  Mr.  Charles  Darwin  talks  about  reaches 
to  vertebrates  clad  in  crinoline,  as  well  as  to  mol- 
lusks  in  shells,  or  articulates  in  jointed  scales,  or 
anything  that  fights  for  breathing-room  and  food 
and  love  in  any  coat  of  fur  or  feather!  Happy 
they  who  can  flash  defiance  from  bright  eyes  and 
snowy  shoulders  back  into  the  pendants  of  the 
insolent  lustres! 

Miss  Mahala  Crane  did  not  have  these  re 
flections  ;  and  no  young  girl  ever  did,  or  ever  will, 
thank  Heaven !  Her  keen  eyes  sparkled  under 
her  plainly  parted  hair,  and  the  green  de-laine 
moulded  itself  in  those  unmistakable  lines  of 
natural  symmetry  in  which  Nature  indulges  a 
small  shopkeeper's  daughter  occasionally  as  well 


124  ELSIE  VENNER. 

as  a  wholesale  dealer's  young  ladies.  She  would 
have  liked  a  new  dress  as  much  as  any  other  girl, 
but  she  meant  to  go  and  have  a  good  time  at 
any  rate. 

The  guests  were  now  arriving  in  the  drawing- 
room  pretty  fast,  and  the  Colonel's  hand  began  to 
burn  a  good  deal  with  the  sharp  squeezes  which 
many  of  the  visitors  gave  it.  Conversation,  which 
had  begun  like  a  summer-shower,  in  scattering 
drops,  was  fast  becoming  continuous,  and  occa 
sionally  rising  into  gusty  swells,  with  now  and 
then  a  broad-chested  laugh  from  some  Captain 
or  Major  or  other  military  personage,  —  for  it  may 
be  noted  that  all  large  and  loud  men  in  the  un- 
paved  districts  bear  military  titles. 

Deacon  Soper  came  up  presently,  and  entered 
into  conversation  with  Colonel  Sprowle. 

"  I  hope  to  see  our  pastor  present  this  evenin'," 
said  the  Deacon. 

"  I  don't  feel  quite '  sure,"  the  Colonel  an 
swered.  "  His  dyspepsy  has  been  bad  on  him 
lately.  He  wrote  to  say,  that,  Providence  per- 
mittin',  it  would  be  agreeable  to  him  to  take  a 
part  in  the  exercises  of  the  evenin' ;  but  I  mis 
trusted  he  didn't  mean  to  come.  To  tell  the 
truth,  Deacon  Soper,  I  rather  guess  he  don't  like 
the  idee  of  dancin',  and  some  of  the  other  little 
arrangements." 

"  Well,"  said  the  Deacon,  "  I  know  there's 
some  condemns  dancin'.  I've  heerd  a  good  deal 
of  talk  about  it  among  the  folks  round.  Some 


ELSIE  VENNER.  125 

have  it  that  it  never  brings  a  blessin'  on  a  house 
to  have  dancin'  in  it.  Judge  Tileston  died,  you 
remember,  within  a  month  after  he  had  his  great 
ball,  twelve  year  ago,  and  some  thought  it  was  in 
the  natur'  of  a  judgment.  I  don't  believe  in  any 
of  them  notions.  If  a  man  happened  to  be  struck 
dead  the  night  after  he'd  been  givin'  a  ball,"  (the 
Colonel  loosened  his  black  stock  a  little,  and 
winked  and  swallowed  two  or  three  times,)  "  I 
shouldn't  call  it  a  judgment,  —  I  should  call  it  a 
coincidence.  But  I'm  a  little  afraid  our  pastor 
won't  come.  Somethin'  or  other's  the  matter 
with  Mr.  Fairweather.  I  should  sooner  expect 
to  see  the  old  Doctor  come  over  out  of  the  Ortho 
dox  parsonage-house." 

"  I've  asked  him,"  said  the  Colonel. 

u  Well  ?  "  said  Deacon  Soper. 

"  He  said  he  should  like  to  come,  but  he  didn't 
know  what  his  people  would  say.  For  his  part, 
he  loved  to  see  young  folks  havin'  their  sports 
together,  and  very  often  felt  as  if  he  should  like 
to  be  one  of  'em  himself.  '  But,'  says  I,  '  Doc 
tor,  I  don't  say  there  won't  be  a  little  dancin'.' 
'  Don't ! '  says  he,  '  for  I  want  Letty  to  go,'  (she's 
his  granddaughter  that's  been  stayin'  with  him,) 
'  and  Letty 's  mighty  fond  of  dancin'.  You  know,' 
says  the  Doctor,  '  it  isn't  my  business  to  settle 
whether  other  people's  children  should  dance  or 
not.'  And  the  Doctor  looked  as  if  he  should  like 
to  rigadoon  and  sashy  across  as  weh1  as  the  young 
one  he  was  talkin'  about.  He's  got  blood  in  him, 


126  ELSIE  VENNER. 

the  old  Doctor  has.     I  wish  our  little  man  and 
him  would  swop  pulpits." 

Deacon  Soper  started  and  looked  up  into  the 
Colonel's  face,  as  if  to  see  whether  he  was  in 
earnest. 

Mr.  Silas  Peckham  and  his  lady  joined  the 
group. 

"  Is  this  to  be  a  Temperance  Celebration,  Mrs. 
Sprowle  ?  "  asked  Mr.  Silas  Peckham. 

Mrs.  Sprowle  replied,  "  that  there  would  be 
lemonade  and  srub  for  those  that  preferred  such 
drinks,  but  that  the  Colonel  had  given  folks  to 
understand  that  he  didn't  mean  to  set  in  judg 
ment  on  the  marriage  in  Canaan,  and  that  those 
that  didn't  like  srub  and  such  things  would  find 
somethin'  that  would  suit  them  better." 

Deacon  Soper's  countenance  assumed  a  certain 
air  of  restrained  cheerfulness.  The  conversation 
rose  into  one  of  its  gusty  paroxysms  just  then. 
Master  H.  Frederic  got  behind  a  door  and  began 
performing  the  experiment  of  stopping  and  un 
stopping  his  ears  in  rapid  alternation,  greatly 
rejoicing  in  the  singular  effect  of  mixed  conver 
sation  chopped  very  small,  like  the  contents  of  a 
mince-pie,  —  or  meat  pie,  as  it  is  more  forcibly 
called  in  the  deep-rutted  villages  lying  along  the 
unsalted  streams.  All  at  once  it  grew  silent  just 
round  the  door,  where  it  had  been  loudest,  —  and 
the  silence  spread  itself  like  a  stain,  till  it  hushed 
everything  but  a  few  corner-duets.  A  dark, 
sad-looking,  middle-aged  gentleman  entered  the 


ELSIE  VENNER.  127 

parlor,  with  a  young  lady  on  his  arm,  —  his 
daughter,  as  it  seemed,  for  she  was  not  wholly 
unlike  him  in  feature,  and  of  the  same  dark  com 
plexion. 

"  Dudley  Venner ! "  exclaimed  a  dozen  people, 
in  startled,  but  half-suppressed  tones. 

"  What  can  have  brought  Dudley  out  to-night?  " 
said  Jefferson  Buck,  a  young  fellow,  who  had 
been  interrupted  in  one  of  the  corner-duets  which 
he  was  executing  in  concert  with  Miss  Susy  Pet 
ti  ngill. 

"How  do  I  know,  Jeff?"  was  Miss  Susy's 
answer.  Then,  after  a  pause,  — "  Elsie  made 
him  come,  I  guess.  Go  ask  Dr.  Kittredge ;  he 
knows  all  about  'em  both,  they  say." 

Dr.  Kittredge,  the  leading  physician  of  Rock- 
land,  was  a  shrewd  old  man,  who  looked  pretty 
keenly  into  his  patients  through  his  spectacles, 
and  pretty  widely  at  men,  women,  and  things  in 
general  over  them.  Sixty-three  years  old,  —  just 
the  year  of  the  grand  climacteric.  A  bald  crown, 
as  every  doctor  should  have.  A  consulting  prac- 
titioner's  mouth  ;  that  is,  movable  round  the  cor- 
ners  while  the  case  is  under  examination,  but 
both  corners  well  drawn  down  and  kept  so  w 
the  final  opinion  is  made  up.  In  fact,  the  Doc 
tor  was  often  sent  for  to  act  as  "  caounsel,"  all 
over  the  county,  and  beyond  it.  He  kept  three 
or  four  horses,  sometimes  riding  in  the  saddle, 
commonly  driving  in  a  sulky,  pretty  fast,  and 
looking  straight  before  him,  so  that  people  got 


128  ELSIE  VENNER. 

out  of  the  way  of  bowing  to  him  as  he  passed 
on  the  road.  There  was  some  talk  about  his  not 
being  so  long-sighted  as  other  folks,  but  his  old 
patients  laughed  and  looked  knowing  when  this 
was  spoken  of. 

The  Doctor  knew  a  good  many  things  besides 
how  to  drop  tinctures  and  shake  out  powders. 
Thus,  he  knew  a  horse,  and,  what  is  harder  to 
understand,  a  horse-dealer,  and  was  a  match  for 

/Tiim.     He  knew  what  a  nervous  woman  is,  and 

/    how  to  manage  her.     He  could  tell  at  a  glance 

when  she  is  in  that  condition  of  unstable  equi- 

l     librium  in  which  a  rough  word  is  like  a  blow  to 

V  her,  and  the  touch  of  unmagnetized  fingers  re- 
\yerses  all  her  nervous  currents.  It  is  not  every 
body  that  enters  into  the  soul  of  Mozart's  or 
Beethoven's  harmonies ;  and  there  are  vital  sym 
phonies  in  B  flat,  and  other  low,  sad  keys,  which 
a  doctor  may  know  as  little  of  as  a  hurdy-gurdy 
player  of  the  essence  of  those  divine  musical  mys 
teries.  The  Doctor  knew  the  difference  between 
what  men  say  and  what  they  mean  as  well  as 
most  people.  When  he  was  listening  to  common 
talk,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  looking  over  his  spec 
tacles  ;  if  he  lifted  his  head  so  as  to  look  through 
them  at  the  person  talking,  he  was  busier  with 
that  person's  thoughts  than  with  his  words. 

Jefferson  Buck  was  not  bold  enough  to  confront 
the  Doctor  with  Miss  Susy's  question,  for  he  did 
not  look  as  if  he  were  in  the  mood  to  answer 
queries  put  by  curious  young  people.  His  eyes 


ELSIE  VENNER.  129 

were  fixed  steadily  on  the  dark  girl,  every  move 
ment  of  whom  he  seemed  to  follow. 

She  was,  indeed,  an  apparition  of  wild  beauty, 
so  unlike  the  girls  about  her  that  it  seemed  noth 
ing  more  than  natural,  that,  when  she  moved,  the 
groups  should  part  to  let  her  pass  through  them, 
and  that  she  should  carry  the  centre  of  all  looks 
and  thoughts  with  her.  She  was  dressed  to  please 
her  own  fancy,  evidently,  with  small  regard  to  the 
modes  declared  correct  by  the  Rockland  milliners 
and  mantua-makers.  Her  heavy  black  hair  lay 
in  a  braided  coil,  with  a  long  gold  pin  shot 
through  it  like  a  javelin.  Round  her  neck  was 
a  golden  torque,  a  round,  cord-like  chain,  such  as 
the  Gauls  used  to  wear:  the  "Dying  Gladiator" 
has  it.  Her  dress  was  a  grayish  watered  silk ;  her 
collar  was  pinned  with  a  flashing  diamond  brooch, 
the  stones  looking  as  fresh  as  morning  dew-drops, 
but  the  silver  setting  of  the  past  generation  ;  her 
arms  were  bare,  round,  but  slender  rather  than 
large,  in  keeping  with  her  lithe  round  figure.  On 
her  wrists  she  wore  bracelets  :  one  was  a  cir 
clet  of  enamelled  scales ;  the  other  looked  as  if  it 
might  have  been  Cleopatra's  asp,  with  its  body 
turned  to  gold  and  its  eyes  to  emeralds. 

Her  father  —  for  Dudley  Venner  was  her  father 
—  looked  like  a  man  of  culture  and  breeding,  but 
melancholy  and  with  a  distracted  air,  as  one 
whose  life  had  met  some  fatal  cross  or  blight. 
He  saluted  hardly  anybody  except  his  entertain 
ers  and  the  Doctor.  One  would  have  said,  to 


130  ELSIE  VENNER. 

look  at  him,  that  he  was  not  at  the  party  by 
choice ;  and  it  was  natural  enough  to  think,  with 
Susy  Petti ngill,  that  it  must  have  been  a  freak 
of  the  dark  girl's  which  brought  him  there,  for  he 
had  the  air  of  a  shy  and  sad-hearted  recluse. 

It  was  hard  to  say  what  could  have  brought 
Elsie  Venner  to  the  party.  Hardly  anybody 
seemed  to  know  her,  and  she  seemed  not  at  all 
disposed  to  make  acquaintances.  Here  and  there 
was  one  of  the  older  girls  from  the  Institute, 
but  she  appeared  to  have  nothing  in  common 
with  them.  Even  in  the  school-room,  it  may  be 
remembered,  she  sat  apart  by  her  own  choice, 
and  now  in  the  midst  of  the  crowd  she  made  a 
circle  of  isolation  round  herself.  Drawing  her 
arm  out  of  her  father's,  she  stood  against  the 
wall,  and  looked,  with  a  strange,  cold  glitter  in 
her  eyes,  at  the  crowd  which  moved  and  babbled 
before  her. 

The  old   Doctor  came  up  to  her  by-and-by. 

"  Well,  Elsie,  I  am  quite  surprised  to  find  you 
here.  Do  tell  me  how  you  happened  to  do  such 
a  good-natured  thing  as  to  let  us  see  you  at 
such  a  great  party." 

"  It's  been  dull  at  the  mansion-house,"  she  said, 
"  and  I  wanted  to  get  out  of  it.  It's  too  lonely 
there,  —  there's  nobody  to  hate  since  Dick's  gone." 

The  Doctor  laughed  good-naturedly,  as  if  this 
were  an  amusing  bit  of  pleasantry,  —  but  he  lifted 
his  head  and  dropped  his  eyes  a  little,  so  as  to 
see  her  through  his  spectacles.  She  narrowed 


ELSIE  TENNER.  131 

her  lids  slightly,  as  one  often  sees  a  sleepy  cat 
narrow  hers,  —  somewhat  as  you  may  remember 
our  famous  Margaret  used  to,  if  you  remember 
her  at  all,  —  so  that  her  eyes  looked  very  small, 
but  bright  as  the  diamonds  on  her  breast.  The 
old  Doctor  felt  very  oddly  as  she  looked  at  him ; 
he  did  not  like  the  feeling,  so  he  dropped  his  head 
and  lifted  his  eyes  and  looked  at  her  over  his 
spectacles  again. 

"  And  how  have  you  all  been  at  the  mansion- 
house  ? "  'said  the  Doctor. 

"  Oh,  well  enough.  But  Dick's  gone,  and 
there's  nobody  left  but  Dudley  and  I  and  the 
people.  I'm  tired  of  it.  What  kills  anybody 
quickest,  Doctor  ?  "  Then,  in  a  whisper,  "  I  ran 
away  again  the  other  day,  you  know." 

"  Where  did  you  go  ?  "  The  Doctor  spoke  in 
a  low,  serious  tone. 

"  Oh,  to  the  old  place.  Here,  I  brought  this 
for  you." 

The  Doctor  started  as  she  handed  him  a  flower 
of  the  Atrag-ene  Americana,  for  he  knew  that 
there  was  only  one  spot  where  it  grew,  and  that 
not  one  where  any  rash  foot,  least  of  all  a  thin- 
shod  woman's  foot,  should  venture. 

"  How  long  were  you  gone  ?  "  said  the  Doctor. 

"  Only  one  night  You  should  have  heard  the 
horns  blowing  and  the  guns  firing.  Dudley  was 
frightened  out  of  his  wits.  Old  Sophy  told  him 
she  'd  had  a  dream,  and  that  I  should  be  found 
in  Dead-Man's  Hollow,  with  a  great  rock  lying 


132  ELSIE  VENNER. 

on  me.  They  hunted  all  over  it,  but  they  didn't 
find  me.  —  I  was  farther  up." 

Doctor  Kittredge  looked  cloudy  and  worried 
while  she  was  speaking,  but  forced  a  pleasant 
professional  smile,  as  he  said  cheerily,  and  as  if 
wishing  to  change  the  subject,  — 

"  Have  a  good  dance  this  evening,  Elsie.  The 
fiddlers  are  tuning  up.  Where  's  the  young  mas 
ter?  Has  he  come  yet?  or  is  he  going  to  be  late, 
with  the  other  great  folks  ?  " 

The  girl  turned  away  without  answering,  and 
looked  toward  the  door. 

The  "  great  folks,"  meaning  the  mansion-house 
gentry,  were  just  beginning  to  come;  Dudley 
Venner  and  his  daughter  had  been  the  first  of 
them.  Judge  Thornton,  white-headed,  fresh-faced, 
as  good  at  sixty  as  he  was  at  forty,  with  a  young 
ish  second  wife,  and  one  noble  daughter,  Arabella, 
who,  they  said,  knew  as  much  law  as  her  father, 
a  stately,  Portia-like  girl,  fit  for  a  premier's  wife, 
not  like  to  find  her  match  even  in  the  great  cities 
she  sometimes  visited;  the  Trecothicks,  the  family 
of  a  merchant,  (in  the  larger  sense,)  who,  having 
made  himself  rich  enough  by  the  time  he  had 
reached  middle  life,  threw  down  his  ledger  as 
Sylla  did  his  dagger,  and  retired  to  make  a  little 
paradise  around  him  in  one  of  the  stateliest  res 
idences  of  the  town,  a 'family  inheritance;  the 
Vaughans,  an  old  Rockland  race,  descended  from 
its  first  settlers,  Toryish  in  tendency  in  Revolu 
tionary  times,  and  barely  escaping  confiscation 


ELSIE   VENNEK.  133 

or  worse;  the  Dunhams,  a  new  family,  dating 
its  gentility  only  as  far  back  as  the  Honorable 
Washington  Dunham,  M.  C.,  but  turning  out  a 
clever  boy  or  two  that  went  to  college,  and  some 
showy  girls  with  white  necks  and  fat  arms  who 
had  picked  up  professional  husbands :  these  were 
the  principal  mansion-house  people.  All  of  them 
had  made  it  a  point  to  come ;  and  as  each  of  them 
entered,  it  seemed  to  Colonel  and  Mrs.  Sprowle 
that  the  lamps  burned  up  with  a  more  cheerful 
light,  and  that  the  fiddles  which  sounded  from 
the  uncarpeted  room  were  all  half  a  tone  higher 
and  half  a  beat  quicker. 

Mr.  Bernard  came  in  later  than  any  of  them  ; 
he  had  been  busy  with  his  new  duties.  He 
looked  well ;  and  that  is  saying  a  good  deal ;  for 
nothing  but  a  gentleman  is  endurable  in  full 
dress.  Hair  that  masses  well,  a  head  set  on  with 
an  air,  a  neckerchief  tied  cleverly  by  an  easy,  prac 
tised  hand,  close-fitting  gloves,  feet  well  shaped 
and  well  covered,  —  these  advantages  can  make 
us  forgive  the  odious  sable  broadcloth  suit,  which 
appears  to  have  been  adopted  by  society  on  the 
same  principle  that  condemned  all  the  Venetian 
gondolas  to  perpetual  and  uniform  blackness.  Mr. 
Bernard,  introduced  by  Mr.  Geordie,  made  his  bow 
to  the  Colonel  and  his  lady  and  .to  Miss  Matilda, 
from  whom  he  got  a  particularly  gracious  curtsy, 
and  then  began  looking  about  him  for  acquaint 
ances.  He  found  two  or  three  faces  he  knew, — 
many  more  strangers.  There  was  Silas  Peckham, 


134  ELSIE  TENNER. 

—  there  was  no  mistaking  him ;  there  was  the 
inelastic  amplitude  of  Mrs.  Peckham  ;  few  of  the 
Apollinean  girls,  of  course,  they  not  being  rec 
ognized  members  of  society, —  but  there  is  one 
with  the  flame  in  her  cheeks  and  the  fire  in  her 
eyes,  the  girl  of  vigorous  tints  and  emphatic  out 
lines,  whom  we  saw  entering  the  school-room  the 
other  day.  Old  Judge  Thornton  has  his  eyes  on 
her,  and  the  Colonel  steals  a  look  every  now  and 
then  at  the  red  brooch  which  lifts  itself  so  superb 
ly  into  the  light,  as  if  he  thought  it  a  wonder 
fully  becoming  ornament.  Mr.  Bernard  himself 
was  not  displeased  with  the  general  effect  of  the 
rich-blooded  school-girl,  as  she  stood  under  the 
bright  lamps,  fanning  herself  in  the  warm,  lan 
guid  air,  fixed  in  a  kind  of  passionate  surprise  at 
the  new  life  which  seemed  to  be  flowering  out  in 
her  consciousness.  Perhaps  he  looked  at  her 
somewhat  steadily,  as  some  others  had  done ;  at 
any  rate,  she  seemed  to  feel  that  she  was  looked 
at,  as  people  often  do,  and,  turning  her  eyes  sud 
denly  on  him,  caught  his  own  on  her  face,  gave 
him  a  half-bashful  smile,  and  threw  in  a  blush 
involuntarily  which  made  it  more  charming. 

"  What  can  I  do  better,"  he  said  to  himself, 
"  than  have  a  dance  with  Rosa  Milburn  ?  "  So 
he  carried  his  handsome  pupil  into  the  next 
room  and  took  his  place  with  her  in  a  cotillon. 
Whether  the  breath  of  the  Goddess  of  Love 
could  intoxicate  like  the  cup  of  Circe,  —  whether 
a  woman  is  ever  phosphorescent  with  the  lumi- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  135 

nous  vapor  of  life  that  she  exhales,  —  these  and 
other  questions  which  relate  to  occult  influences 
exercised  by  certain  women,  we  will  not  now 
discuss.  It  is  enough  that  Mr.  Bernard  was  sen 
sible  of  a  strange  fascination,  not  wholly  new  to 
him,  nor  unprecedented  in  the  history  of  human 
experience,  but  always  a  revelation  when  it  comes 
over  us  for  the  first  or  the  hundredth  time,  so 
pale  is  the  most  recent  memory  by  the  side  of 
the  passing  moment  with  the  flush  of  any  new 
born  passion  on  its  cheek.  Remember  that  Na 
ture  makes  every  man  love  all  women,  and  trusts 
the  trivial  matter  of  special  choice  to  the  com 
monest  accident. 

If  Mr.  Bernard  had  had  nothing  to  distract  his 
attention,  he  might  have  thought  too  much  about 
his  handsome  partner,  and  then  gone  home  and 
dreamed  about  her,  which  is  always  dangerous, 
and  waked  up  thinking  of  her  still,  and  then  be 
gun  to  be  deeply  interested  in  her  studies,  and 
so  on,  through  the  whole  syllogism  which  ends 
in  Nature's  supreme  quod  erat  demonstrandum. 
What  was  there  to  distract  him  or  disturb  him  ? 
He  did  not  know,  —  but  there  was  something. 
This  sumptuous  creature,  this  Eve  just  within 
the  gate  of  an  untried  Paradise,  untutored  in  the 
ways  of  the  world,  but  on  tiptoe  to  reach  the 
fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  —  alive  to  the 
moist  vitality  of  that  warm  atmosphere  palpitat 
ing  with  voices  and  music,  as  the  flower  of  some 
dioecious  plant  which  has  grown  in  a  lone  corner, 


136  ELSJI.    VKNNER. 

and  suddenly  unfolding  its  corolla  on  some  hot- 
breathing  June  evening,  feels  that  the  air  is  per 
fumed  with  strange  odors  and  loaded  with  golden 
dust  wafted  from  those  other  blossoms  with  which 
its  double  life  is  shared,  —  this  almost  over-wom 
anized  woman  might  well  have  bewitched  him, 
but  that  he  had  a  vague  sense  of  a  counter-charm. 
It  was,  perhaps,  only  the  same  consciousness  that 
some  one  was  looking  at  him  which  he  himself 
had  just  given  occasion  to  in  his  .partner.  Pres 
ently,  in  one  of  the  turns  of  the  dance,  he  felt 
his  eyes  drawn  to  a  figure  he  had  not  distinctly 
recognized,  though  he  had  dimly  felt  its  presence, 
and  saw  that  Elsie  Venner  was  looking  at  him 
as  if  she  saw  nothing  else  but  him.  He  was 
not  a  nervous  person,  like  the  poor  lady  teacher, 
yet  the  glitter  of  the  diamond  eyes  affected  him 
strangely.  It  seemed  to  disenchant  the  air,  so 
full  a  moment  before  of  strange  attractions.  He 
became  silent,  and  dreamy,  as  it  were.  The 
round-limbed  beauty  at  his  side  crushed  her 
gauzy  draperies  against  him,  as  they  trod  the 
figure  of  the  dance  together,  but  it  was  no  more 
to  him  than  if  an  old  nurse  had  laid  her  hand 
on  his  sleeve.  The  young  girl  chafed  at  his 
seeming  neglect,  and  her  imperious  blood  mount 
ed  into  her  cheeks  ;  but  he  appeared  unconscious 
of  it. 

"  There  is  one  of  our  young  ladies  I  must 
speak  to,"  he  said,  —  and  was  just  leaving  his 
partner's  side. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  137 

"  Four  hands  all  round ! "  shouted  the  first  vi 
olin, —  and  Mr.  Bernard  found  himself  seized  and 
whirled  in  a  circle  out  of  which  he  could  not  es 
cape,  and  then  forced  to  "  cross  over,"  and  then 
to  "  dozy  do,"  as  the  maestro  had  it,  —  and  when, 
on  getting  back  to  his  place,  he  looked  for  Elsie 
Venner,  she  was  gone. 

The  dancing  went  on  briskly.  Some  of  the 
old  folks  looked  on,  others  conversed  in  groups 
and  pairs,  and  so  the  evening  wore  along,  until  a 
little  after  ten  o'clock.  About  this  time  there 
was  noticed  an  increased  bustle  in  the  passages, 
with  a  -considerable  opening  and  shutting  of 
doors.  Presently  it  began  to  be  whispered  about 
that  they  were  going  to  have  supper.  Many, 
who  had  never  been  to  any  large  party  before, 
held  their  breath  for  a  moment  at  this  announce 
ment.  It  was  rather  with  a  tremulous  interest 
than  with  open  hilarity  that  the  rumor  was  gen 
erally  received. 

One  point  the  Colonel  had  entirely  forgotten 
to  settle.  It  was  a  point  involving  not  merely 
propriety,  but  perhaps  principle  also,  or  at  least 
the  good  report  of  the  house,  —  and  he  had  never 
thought  to  arrange  it.  He  took  Judge  Thornton 
aside  and  whispered  the  important  question  to 
him,  —  in  his  distress  of  mind,  mistaking  pockets 
and  taking  out  his  bandanna  instead  of  his  white 
handkerchief  to  wipe  his  forehead. 

"Judge,"  he  said,  "  do  you  think,  that,  before 
we  commence  refreshing  ourselves  at  the  tables, 


138  ELSIE  VEXNER. 

it  would  be  the  proper  thing  to  —  crave  a  —  to 
request  Deacon  Soper  or  some  other  elderly  per 
son  —  to  ask  a  blessing  ?  " 

The  Judge  looked  as  grave  as  if  he  were  about 
giving  the  opinion  of  the  Court  in  the  great  In 
dia-rubber  case. 

"  On  the  whole,"  he  answered,  after  a  pause, 
"  I  should  think  it  might,  perhaps,  be  dispensed 
with  on  this  occasion.  Young  folks  are  noisy, 
and  it  is  awkward  to  have  talking  and  laughing 
going  on  while  a  blessing  is  being  asked.  Un 
less  a  clergyman  is  present  and  makes  a  point 
of  it,  I  think  it  will  hardly  be  expected." 

The  Colonel  was  infinitely  relieved.  "  Judge, 
will  you  take  Mrs.  Sprowle  in  to  supper  ?  "  And 
the  Colonel  returned  the  compliment  by  offering 
his  arm  to  Mrs.  Judge  Thornton. 

The  door  of  the  supper-roorn  was  now  open, 
and  the  company,  following  the  lead  of  the  host 
and  hostess,  began  to  stream  into  it,  until  it  was 
pretty  well  filled. 

There  was  an  awful  kind  of  pause.  Many 
were  beginning  to  drop  their  heads  and  shut 
their  eyes,  in  anticipation  of  the  usual  petition 
before  a  meal ;  some  expected  the  music  to  strike 
up,  —  others,  that  an  oration  would  now  be  de 
livered  by  the  Colonel. 

"  Make  yourselves  at  home,  ladies  and  gentle 
men,"  said  the  Colonel;  "  good  things  were  made 
to  eat,  and  you  're  welcome  to  all  you  see  before 
you." 


ELSIE  VENNER.  139 

So  saying,  he  attacked  a  huge  turkey  which 
stood  at  the  head  of  the  table  ;  and  his  example 
being  followed  first  by  the  bold,  then  by  the 
doubtful,  and  lastly  by  the  timid,  the  clatter  soon 
made  the  circuit  of  the  tables.  Some  were 
shocked,  however,  as  the  Colonel  had  feared 
they  would  be,  at  the  want  of  the  customary  in 
vocation.  Widow  Leech,  a  kind  of  relation, 
who  had  to  be  invited,  and  who  came  with  her 
old,  back-country-looking  string  of  gold  beads 
round  her  neck,  seemed  to  feel  very  serious  about 
it. 

"  If  she'd  ha'  known  that  folks  would  begrutch 
cravin'  a  blessin'  over  sech  a  heap  o'  provisions, 
she'd  rather  ha'  staid  t'  home.  It  was  a  bad 
sign,  when  folks  wasn't  grateful  for  the  baounties 
of  Providence." 

The  elder  Miss  Spinney,  to  whom  she  made 
this  remark,  assented  to  it,  at  the  same  time 
ogling  a  piece  of  frosted  cake,  which  she  pres 
ently  appropriated  with  great  refinement  of  man 
ner,  —  taking  it  between  her  thumb  and  fore 
finger,  keeping  the  others  well  spread  and  the 
little  finger  in  extreme  divergence,  with  a  grace 
ful  undulation  of  the  neck,  and  a  queer  little 
sound  in  her  throat,  as  of  an  m  that  wanted  to 
get  out  and  perished  in  the  attempt. 

The  tables  now  presented  an  animated  spec 
tacle.  Young  fellows  of  the  more  dashing  sort, 
with  high  stand-up  collars  and  voluminous  bows 
to  their  neckerchiefs,  distinguished  themselves  by 


140  ELSIE  TENNER. 

cutting  up  fowls  and  offering  portions  thereof  to 
the  buxom  girls  these  knowing  ones  had  com 
monly  selected. 

"  A  bit  of  the  wing,  Roxy,  or  of  the  —  under 
limb  ?  " 

The  first  laugh  broke  out  at  this,  but  it  was 
premature,  a  sporadic  laugh,  as  Dr.  Kittredge 
would  have  said,  which  did  not  become  epidemic. 
People  were  very  solemn  as  yet,  many  of  them 
being  new  to  such  splendid  scenes,  and  crushed, 
as  it  were,  in  the  presence  of  so  much  crockery 
and  so  many  silver  spoons,  and  such  a  variety  of 
unusual  viands  and  beverages.  When  the  laugh 
rose  around  Roxy  and  her  saucy  beau,  several 
looked  in  that  direction  with  an  anxious  expres 
sion,  as  if  something  had  happened,  —  a  lady 
fainted,  for  instance,  or  a  couple  of  lively  fellows 
come  to  high  words. 

"  Young  folks  will  be  young  folks,"  said  Dea 
con  Soper.  "  No  harm  done.  Least  said  soon 
est  mended." 

u  Have  some  of  these  shell-oysters  ?  "  said  the 
Colonel  to  Mrs.  Trecothick. 

A  delicate  emphasis  on  the  word  shell  implied 
that  the  Colonel  knew  what  was  what.  To  the 
New  England  inland  native,  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  east  winds,  the  oyster  unconditioned,  the 
oyster  absolute,  without  a  qualifying  adjective, 
is  the  pickled  oyster.  Mrs.  Trecothick,  who  knew 
very  well  that  an  oyster  long  out  of  his  shell  (as 
is  apt  to  be  the  case  with  the  rural  bivalve)  gets 


ELSIE  VENNER.  141 

homesick  and  loses  his  sprightliness,  replied,  with 
the  pleasantest  smile  in  the  world,  that  the  chick 
en  she  had  been  helped  to  was  too  delicate  to  be 
given  up  even  for  the  greater  rarity.  But  the 
word  "  shell-oysters  "  had  been  overheard  ;  and 
there  was  a  perceptible  crowding  movement  tow 
ards  their  newly  discovered  habitat,  a  large  soup- 
tureen. 

Silas  Peckham  had  meantime  fallen  upon  an 
other  locality  of  these  recent  mollusks.  He  said 
nothing,  but  helped  himself  freely,  and  made  a 
sign  to  Mrs.  Peckham. 

"  Lorindy,"  he  whispered,  "  shell-oysters  ! " 

And  ladled  them  out  to  her  largely,  without 
betraying  any  emotion,  just  as  if  they  had  been 
the  natural  inland  or  pickled  article. 

After  the  more  solid  portion  of  the  banquet 
had  been  duly  honored,  the  cakes  and  sweet 
preparations  of  various  kinds  began  to  get  their 
share  of  attention.  There  were  great  cakes  and 
little  cakes,  cakes  with  raisins  in  them,  cakes  with 
currants,  and  cakes  without  either ;  there  were 
brown  cakes  and  yellow  cakes,  frosted  cakes, 
glazed  cakes,  hearts  and  rounds,  and  jumbles, 
which  playful  youth  slip  over  the  forefinger  be 
fore  spoiling  their  annular  outline.  There  were 
moulds  of  blo'monje,  of  the  arrowroot  variety,  — 
that  being  undistinguishable  from  such  as  is 
made  with  Russia  isinglass.  There  were  jel 
lies,  which  had  been  shaking,  all  the  time  the 
young  folks  were  dancing  in  the  next  room,  as 


142  ELSIE  VENNER. 

if  they  were  balancing  to  partners.  There  were 
built-up  fabrics,  called  Charlottes,  caky  externally, 
pulpy  within ;  there  were  also  marangs,  and  like 
wise  custards,  —  some  of  the  indolent-fluid  sort, 
others  firm,  in  which  every  stroke  of  the  teaspoon 
left  a  smooth,  conchoidal  surface  like  the  fracture 
of  chalcedony,  with  here  and  there  a  little  eye 
like  what  one  sees  in  cheeses.  Nor  was  that 
most  wonderful  object  of  domestic  art  called 
trifle  wanting,  with  its  charming  confusion  of 
cream  and  cake  and  almonds  and  jam  and  jelly 
and  wine  and  cinnamon  and  froth  ;  nor  yet  the 
marvellous  floating-island,  —  name  suggestive  of 
all  that  is  romantic  in  the  imaginations  of  youth 
ful  palates. 

"  It  must  have  cost  you  a  sight  of  work,  to  say 
nothin'  of  money,  to  get  all  this  beautiful  confec 
tionery  made  for  the  party,"  said  Mrs.  Crane  to 
Mrs.  Sprowle. 

"  Well,  it  cost  some  consid'able  labor,  no 
doubt,"  said  Mrs.  Sprowle.  "  Matilda  and  our 
girls  and  I  made  'most  all  the  cake  with  our  own 
hands,  and  we  all  feel  some  tired  ;  but  if  folks  get 
what  suits  'em,  we  don't  begrudge  the  time  nor 
the  work.  But  I  do  feel  thirsty,"  said  the  poor 
lady,  "  and  I  think  a  glass  of  srub  would  do  my 
throat  good ;  it's  dreadful  dry.  Mr.  Peckham, 
would  you  be  so  polite  as  to  pass  me  a  glass 
of  srub  ?  " 

Silas  Peckham  bowed  with  great  alacrity,  and 
took  from  the  table  a  small  glass  cup,  containing 


ELSIE  VENNER.  143 

a  fluid  reddish  in  hue  and  subacid  in  taste.  This 
was  srub,  a  beverage  in  local  repute,  of  question 
able  nature,  but  suspected  of  owing  its  color  and 
sharpness  to  some  kind  of  syrup  derived  from  the 
maroon-colored  fruit  of  the  sumac.  There  were 
similar  small  cups  on  the  table  filled  with  lemon 
ade,  and  here  and  there  a  decanter  of  Madeira 
wine,  of  the  Marsala  kind,  which  some  prefer  to, 
and  many  more  cannot  distinguish  from,  that 
which  comes  from  the  Atlantic  island. 

"  Take  a  glass  of  wine,  Judge,"  said  the  Col 
onel  ;  "  here  is  an  article  that  I  rather  think  '11 
suit  you." 

The  Judge  knew  something  of  wines,  and 
could  tell  all  the  famous  old  Madeiras  from 
each  other,  —  "Eclipse,"  "Juno,"  the  almost  fab 
ulously  scarce  and  precious  "  White-top,"  and 
the  rest.  He  struck  the  nativity  of  the  Mediter 
ranean  Madeira  before  it  had  fairly  moistened 
his  lip. 

"  A  sound  wine,  Colonel,  and  I  should  think 
of  a  genuine  vintage.  Your  very  good  health." 

"  Deacon  Soper,"  said  the  Colonel,  "  here  is 
some  Madary  Judge  Thornton  recommends. 
Let  me  fill  you  a  glass  of  it." 

The  Deacon's  eyes  glistened.  He  was  one  of 
those  consistent  Christians  who  stick  firmly  by 
the  first  miracle  and  Paul's  advice  to  Timothy. 

"  A  little  good  wine  won't  hurt  anybody," 
said  the  Deacon.  "  Plenty,  —  plenty,  —  plenty. 
There  I  "  He  had  not  withdrawn  his  glass,  while 


144  ELSIE  VENNER. 

the  Colonel  was  pouring,  for  fear  it  should  spill ; 
and  now  it  was  running  over. 

It  is  very  odd  how  all  a  man's  philosophy 

and  theology  are  at  the  mercy  of  a  few  drops  of 
a  fluid  which  the  chemists  say  consists  of  nothing 
but  C  4,  O  2,  H  6.  The  Deacon's  theology  fell 
off  several  points  towards  latitudinarianism  in  the 
course  of  the  next  ten  minutes.  He  had  a  deep 
inward  sense  that  everything  was  as  it  should  be, 
human  nature  included.  The  little  accidents  oi 
humanity,  known  collectively  to  moralists  as  sin, 
looked  very  venial  to  his  growing  sense  of  univer 
sal  brotherhood  and  benevolence. 

"  It  will  all  come  right,"  the  Deacon  said  to 
himself,  — "  I  feel  a  joyful  conviction  that  every 
thing  is  for  the  best.  I  am  favored  with  a  bless 
ed  peace  of  mind,  and  a  very  precious  season  of 
good  feelin'  toward  my  fellow-creturs." 

A  lusty  young  fellow  happened  to  make  a 
quick  step  backward  just  at  that  instant,  and 
put  his  heel,  with  his  weight  on  top  of  it,  upon 
the  Deacon's  toes. 

"  Aigh  !  What  the  d'  d'  didos  are  y'  abaout 
with  them  great  huffs  o'  yourn  ?  "  said  the  Dea 
con,  with  an  expression  upon  his  features  not 
exactly  that  of  peace  and  good-will  to  man. 
The  lusty  young  fellow  apologized;  but  the 
Deacon's  face  did  not  come  right,  and  his  the 
ology  backed  round  several  points  in  the  direc 
tion  of  total  depravity. 

Some  of  the  dashing  young  men  in  stand-up 


ELSIE  VENNER.  145 

collars  and  extensive  neck-ties,  encouraged  by 
Mr.  Geordie,  made  quite  free  with  the  "  Ma- 
dary,"  and  even  induced  some  of  the  more  styl 
ish  girls  —  not  of  the  mansion-house  set,  but  of 
the  tip -top  two-story  families  —  to  taste  a  little. 
Most  of  these  young  ladies  made  faces  at  it,  and 
declared  it  was  "  perfectly  horrid,"  with  that  as 
pect  of  veracity  peculiar  to  their  age  and  sex. 

About  this  time  a  movement  was  made  on 
the  part  of  some  of  the  mansion-house  people 
to  leave  the  supper-table.  Miss  Jane  Treco- 
thick  had  quietly  hinted  to  her  mother  that  she 
had  had  enough  of  it.  Miss  Arabella  Thornton 
had  whispered  to  her  father  that  he  had  better 
adjourn  this  court  to  the  next  room.  There 
were  signs  of  migration,  —  a  loosening  of  peo 
ple  in  their  places, —  a  looking  about  for  arms 
to  hitch  on  to. 

"Stop!"  said  the  Colonel.  "There's  some 
thing  coming  yet. Ice-cream ! " 

The  great  folks  saw  that  the  play  was  not  over 
yet,  and  that  it  was  only  polite  to  stay  and  see 
it  out.  The  word  "  Ice-Cream "  was  no  sooner 
whispered  than  it  passed  from  one  to  another  all 
down  the  tables.  The  effect  xvas  what  might 
have  been  anticipated.  Many  of  the  guests  had 
never  seen  this  celebrated  product  of  human  skill, 
and  to  all  the  two-story  population  of  Rockland 
it  was  the  last  expression  of  the  art  of  pleasing 
and  astonishing  the  human  palate.  Its  appear 
ance  had  been  deferred  for  several  reasons  :  first, 

VOL.    I.  10 


146  ELSIE  TENNER. 

because  everybody  would  have  attacked  it,  if  it 
had  come  in  with  the  other  luxuries  ;  secondly, 
because  undue  apprehensions  were  entertained 
(owing  to  want  of  experience)  of  its  tendency  to 
deliquesce  and  resolve  itself  with  alarming  rapid 
ity  into  puddles  of  creamy  fluid ;  and,  thirdly, 
because  the  surprise  would  make  a  grand  cli 
max  to  finish  off  the  banquet. 

There  is  something  so  audacious  in  the  con 
ception  of  ice-cream,  that  it  is  not  strange  that 
a  population  undebauched  by  the  luxury  of  great 
cities  looks  upon  it  with  a  kind  of  awe  and 
speaks  of  it  with  a  certain  emotion.  This  de 
fiance  of  the  seasons,  forcing  Nature  to  do  her 
work  of  congelation  in  the  face  of  her  sultriest 
noon,  might  well  inspire  a  timid  mind  with  fear 
lest  human  art  were  revolting  against  the  Higher 
Powers,  and  raise  the  same  scruples  which  re 
sisted  the  use  of  ether  and  chloroform  in  certain 
contingencies.  Whatever  may  be  the  cause,  it 
is  well  known  that  the  announcement  at  any 
private  rural  entertainment  that  there  is  to  be 
ice-cream  produces  an  immediate  and  profound 
impression.  It  may  be  remarked,  as  aiding  this 
impression,  that  exaggerated  ideas  are  enter 
tained  as  to  the  dangerous  effects  this  con 
gealed  food  may  produce  on  persons  not  in  the 
most  robust  health. 

There  was  silence  as  the  pyramids  of  ice  were 
placed  on  the  table,  everybody  looking  on  in  ad 
miration.  The  Colonel  took  a  knife  and  assailed 


ELSIE  VENKER.  147 

the  one  at  the  head  of  the  table.  When  he  tried 
to  cut  off  a  slice,  it  didn't  seem  to  understand  it, 
however,  and  only  tipped,  as  if  it  wanted  to  up 
set.  The  Colonel  attacked  it  on  the  other  side 
and  it  tipped  just  as  badly  the  other  way.  It 
was  awkward  for  the  Colonel.  "  Permit  me," 
said  the  Judge,  —  and  he  took  the  knife  and 
struck  a  sharp  slanting  stroke  which  sliced  off 
a  piece  just  of  the  right  size,  and  offered  it  to 
Mrs.  Sprowle.  This  act  of  dexterity  was  much 
admired  by  the  company. 

The  tables  were  all  alive  again. 

"  Lorindy,  here's  a  plate  of  ice-cream,"  said 
Silas  Peckham. 

"  Come,  Mahaly,"  said  a  fresh-looking  young 
fellow  with  a  saucerful  in  each  hand,  "  here's 
your  ice-cream ;  —  let's  go  in  the  corner  and  have 
a  celebration,  us  two."  And  the  old  green  de 
laine,  with  the  young  curves  under  it  to  make  it  sit 
well,  moved  off  as  pleased  apparently  as  if  it  had 
been  silk  velvet  with  thousand-dollar  laces  over  it. 

"  Oh,  now,  Miss  Green !  do  you  think  it's  safe 
to  put  that  cold  stuff  into  your  stomick  ?  "  said 
the  Widow  Leech  to  a  young  married  lady, 
who,  finding  the  air  rather  warm,  thought  a  little 
ice  would  cool  her  down  very  nicely.  "  It's  jest 
like  eatin'  snowballs.  You  don't  look  very  rug 
ged  ;  and  I  should  be  dreadful  afeard,  if  I  was 


you" 


"  Carrie,"  said  old  Dr.  Kittredge,  who  had  over 
heard  this,  —  "  how  well  you're  looking  this  even- 


148  ELSIE  VENNER. 

ing  !  .  But  you  must  be  tired  and  heated ;  —  sit 
down  here,  and  let  me  give  you  a  good  slice  of 
ice-cream.  How  you  young  folks  do  grow  up,  to 
be  sure !  I  don't  feel  quite  certain  whether  it's 
ypu  or  your  older  sister,  but  I  know  it's  somebody 
I  call  Carrie,  and  that  I've  known  ever  since  " 

A  sound  something  between  a  howl  and  an 
oath  startled  the  company  and  broke  off  the  Doc 
tor's  sentence.  Everybody's  eyes  turned  in  the 
direction  from  which  it  came.  A  group  instantly 
gathered  round  the  person  who  had  uttered  it, 
who  was  no  other  than  Deacon  Soper. 

"  He's  chokin' !  he's  chokin' !  "  was  the  first 
exclamation,  —  "  slap  him  on  the  back !  " 

Several  heavy  fists  beat  such  a  tattoo  on  his 
spine  that  the  Deacon  felt  as  if  at  least  one  of  his 
vertebrae  would  come  up. 

"  He's  black  in  the  face,"  said  Widow  Leech, 
— "  he's  swallered  somethin'  the  wrong  way. 
Where's  the  Doctor  ?  —  let  the  Doctor  get  to  him, 
can't  ye  ?  " 

"  If  you  will  move,  my  good  lady,  perhaps  I 
can,"  said  Doctor  Kittredge,  in  a  calm  tone  of 
voice.  — "  He's  not  choking,  my  friends,"  the 
Doctor  added  immediately,  when  he  got  sight  of 
him. 

"  It's  apoplexy,  —  I  told  you  so,  —  don't  you 
see  how  red  he  is  in  the  face  ? "  said  old  Mrs. 
Peake,  a  famous  woman  for  "  nussin  "  sick  folks, 
—  determined  to  be  a  little  ahead  of  the  Doctor. 

"  It's  not  apoplexy,"  said  Dr.  Kittredge. 


ELSIE  VEXXER.  149 

«  What  is  it,  Doctor  ?  what  is  it  ?  Will  he  die  ? 
Is  he  dead  ?  —  Here's  his  poor  wife,  the  Widow 
Soper  that  is  to  be,  if  she  a'n't  a'ready  " 

"  Do  be  quiet,  my  good  woman,"  said  Dr.  Kit- 
tredge.  —  "  Nothing  serious,  I  think,  Mrs.  Soper.  — 
Deacon !  " 

The  sudden  attack  of  Deacon  Soper  had  begun 
with  the  extraordinary  sound  mentioned  above. 
His  features  had  immediately  assumed  an  expres 
sion  of  intense  pain,  his  eyes  staring  wildly,  and, 
clapping  his  hands  to  his  face,  he  had  rocked  his 
head  backward  and  forward  in  speechless  agony. 

At  the  Doctor's  sharp  appeal  the  Deacon  lifted 
his  head. 

"  It's  all  right,"  said  the  Doctor,  as  soon  as  he 
saw  his  face.  "  The  Deacon  had  a  smart  attack 
of  neuralgic  pain.  That's  all.  Very  severe,  but 
not  at  all  dangerous." 

The  Doctor  kept  his  countenance,  but  his  dia 
phragm  was  shaking  the  change  in  his  waistcoat- 
pockets  with  subterranean  laughter.  He  had 
looked  through  his  spectacles  and  seen  at  once 
what  had  happened.  The  Deacon,  not  being  in 
the  habit  of  taking  his  nourishment  in  the  con 
gealed  state,  had  treated  the  ice-cream  as  a  pud 
ding  of  a  rare  species,  and,  to  make  sure  of  doing 
himself  justice  in  its  distribution,  had  taken  a 
large  mouthful  of  it  without  the  least  precaution. 
The  consequence  was  a  sensation  as  if  a  dentist 
were  killing  the  nerves  of  twenty-five  teeth  at 
once  with  hot  irons,  or  cold  ones,  which  would 
hurt  rather  worse. 


150  ELSIE  VENNER. 

The  Deacon  swallowed  something  with  a  spas 
modic  effort,  and  recovered  pretty  soon  and  re 
ceived  the  congratulations  of  his  friends.  There 
were  different  versions  of  the  expressions  he  had 
used  at  the  onset  of  his  complaint,  —  some  of  the 
reported  exclamations  involving  a  breach  of  pro 
priety,  to  say  the  least,  —  but  it  was  agreed  that 
a  man  in  an  attack  of  neuralgy  wasn't  to  be 
judged  of  by  the  rules  that  applied  to  other  folks. 

The  company  soon  after  this  retired  from  the 
supper-room.  The  mansion-house  gentry  took 
their  leave,  and  the  two-story  people  soon  fol 
lowed.  Mr.  Bernard  had  staid  an  hour  or  two, 
and  left  soon  after  he  found  that  Elsie  Venner  and 
her  father  had  disappeared.  As  he  passed  by  the 
dormitory  of  the  Institute,  he  saw  a  light  glim 
mering  from  one  of  its  upper  rooms,  where  the 
lady  teacher  was  still  waking.  His  heart  ached, 
when  he  remembered,  that,  through  all  these  hours 
of  gayety,  or  what  was  meant  for  it,  the  patient 
girl  had  been  at  work  in  her  little  chamber ;  and 
he  looked  up  at  the  silent  stars,  as  if  to  see  that 
they  were  watching  over  her.  The  planet  Mars 
was  burning  like  a  red  coal ;  the  northern  con 
stellation  was  slanting  downward  about  its  cen 
tral  point  of  flame  ;  and  while  he  looked,  a  falling 
star  slid  from  the  zenith  and  was  lost. 

He  reached  his  chamber  and  was  soon  dreaming 
over  the  Event  of  the  Season. 


ELSIE  TENNER.  151 


CHAPTER  VIIL 

THE    MORNING   AFTER. 

COLONEL  SPROWLE'S  family  arose  late  the  next 
morning.  The  fatigues  and  excitements  of  the 
evening  and  the  preparation  for  it  were  followed 
by  a  natural  collapse,  of  which  somnolence  was 
a  leading  symptom.  The  sun  shone  into  the 
window  at  a  pretty  well  opened  angle  when  the 
Colonel  first  found  himself  sufficiently  awake  to 
address  his  yet  slumbering  spouse. 

"  Sally ! "  said  the  Colonel,  in  a  voice  that  was 
a  little  husky,  —  for  he  had  finished  off  the  even 
ing  with  an  extra  glass  or  two  of  "  Madary,"  and 
had  a  somewhat  rusty  and  headachy  sense  of  re 
newed  existence,  on  greeting  the  rather  advanced 
dawn,  — "Sally!" 

"  Take  care  o'  them  custard-cups  !  There  they 
go!" 

Poor  Mrs.  Sprowle  was  fighting  the  party  over 
in  her  dream  ;  and  as  the  visionary  custard-cups 
crashed  down  through  one  lobe  of  her  brain  into 
another,  she  gave  a  start  as  if  an  inch  of  lightning 
from  a  quart  Leyden  jar  had  jumped  into  one  of 
her  knuckles  with  its  sudden  and  lively  poonk  ! 


152  ELSIE  VEX  NEB. 

."  Sally !  "  said  the  Colonel, —  "  wake  up,  wake 
up  I  What  'r'  y'  dreamin'  abaout  ?  " 

Mrs.  Sprowle  raised  herself,  by  a  sort  of  spasm, 
sur  son  seant,  as  they  say  in  France,  —  up  on  end, 
as  we  have  it  in  New  England.  She  looked  first 
to  the  left,  then  to  the  right,  then  straight  before 
her,  apparently  without  seeing  anything,  and  at 
last  slowly  settled  down,  with  her  two  eyes,  blank 
of  any  particular  meaning,  directed  upon  the 
Colonel. 

"  What  time  is't  ?  "  she  said. 

"  Ten  o'clock.  What  'y'  been  dreamin'  abaout  ? 
Y'  giv  a  jump  like  a  hoppergrass.  Wake  up, 
wake  up !  Th'  party's  over,  and  y'  been  asleep 
all  the  mornin'.  The  party's  over,  I  tell  ye ! 
Wake  up!" 

"  Over ! "  said  Mrs.  Sprowle,  who  began  to  de 
fine  her  position  at  last,  —  "  over !  I  should  think 
'twas  time  'twas  over!  It's  lasted  a  hundud  year. 
I've  been  workin'  for  that  party  longer  'n  Methu 
selah's  lifetime,  sence  I  been  asleep.  The  pies 
wouldn'  bake,  and  the  blo'monge  wouldn'  set,  and 
the  ice-cream  wouldn'  freeze,  and  all  the  folks  kep' 
comin'  'n'  comin'  'n'  comin',  —  everybody  I  ever 
knew  in  all  my  life,  —  some  of  'em  's  been  dead 
this  twenty  year  'n'  more,  —  'n'  nothin'  for  'em  to 
eat  nor  drink.  The  fire  wouldn'  burn  to  cook 
anything,  all  we  could  do.  We  blowed  with  the 
belluses,  'n'  we  stuffed  in  paper  'n'  pitch-pine  kin- 
dlin's,  but  nothin'  could  make  that  fire  burn  ;  'n' 
all  the  time  the  folks  kep'  comin',  as  if  they'd 


ELSIE  VENNER.  153 

never  stop,  —  V  nothin'  for  'em  but  empty  dishes, 
'n'  all  the  borrowed  chaney  slippin'  round  on  the 
waiters  'n'  chippin'  'n'  crackin',  —  I  wouldn'  go 
through  what  I  been  through  t'-night  for  all  th' 
money  in  th'  Bank,  —  I  do  believe  it's  harder  t' 
have  a  party  than  t'  " 

Mrs.  Sprowle  stated  the  case  strongly. 

The  Colonel  said  he  didn't  know  how  that 
might  be.  She  was  a  better  judge  than  he  was. 
It  was  bother  enough,  anyhow,  and  he  was  glad 
that  it  was  over.  After  this,  the  worthy  pair  com 
menced  preparations  for  rejoining  the  waking 
world,  and  in  due  time  proceeded  down-stairs. 

Everybody  was  late  that  morning,  and  nothing 
had  got  put  to  rights.  The  house  looked  as  if  a 
small  army  had  been  quartered  in  it  over  night. 
The  tables  were  of  course  in  huge  disorder,  after 
the  protracted  assault  they  had  undergone.  There 
had  been  a  great  battle  evidently,  and  it  had  gone 
against  the  provisions.  Some  points  had  been 
stormed,  and  all  their  defences  annihilated,  but 
here  and  there  were  centres  of  resistance  which 
had  held  out  against  ah1  attacks,  —  large  rounds 
of  beef,  and  solid  loaves  of  cake,  against  which 
the  inexperienced  had  wasted  their  energies  in 
the  enthusiasm  of  youth  or  uninformed  maturity, 
while  the  longer-headed  guests  were  making  dis 
coveries  of  "  shell-oysters  "  and  "  patridges  "  and 
similar  delicacies. 

The  breakfast  was  naturally  of  a  somewhat 
fragmentary  character.  A  chicken  that  had  lost 


154  ELSIE  VENNKi:. 

his  legs  in  the  service  of  the  preceding  campaign 
was  once  more  put  on  duty.  A  great  ham  stuck 
with  cloves,  as  Saint  Sebastian  was  with  arrows, 
was  again  offered  for  martyrdom.  It  would  have 
been  a  pleasant  sight  for  a  medical  man  of  a 
speculative  turn  to  have  seen  the  prospect  before 
the  Colonel's  family  of  the  next  week's  breakfasts, 
dinners,  and  suppers.  The  trail  that  one  of  these 
great  rural  parties  leaves  after  it  is  one  of  its  most 
formidable  considerations.  Every  door-handle  in 
the  house  is  suggestive  of  sweetmeats  for  the 
next  week,  at  least.  The  most  unnatural  articles 
of  diet  displace  the  frugal  but  nutritions  food  of 
unconvulsed  periods  of  existence.  If  there  is  a 
walking  infant  about  the  house,  it  will  certainly 
have  a  more  or  less  fatal  fit  from  overmuch  of 
some  indigestible  delicacy.  Before  the  week  is 
out,  everybody  will  be  tired  to  death  of  sugary 
forms  of  nourishment  and  long  to  see  the  last  of 
the  remnants  of  the  festival. 

The  family  had  not  yet  arrived  at  this  condi 
tion.  On  the  contrary,  the  first  inspection  of  the 
tables  suggested  the  prospect  of  days  of  unstinted 
luxury  ;  and  the  younger  portion  of  the  house 
hold,  especially,  were  in  a  state  of  great  excite 
ment  as  the  account  of  stock  was  taken  with 
reference  to  future  internal  investments.  Some 
curious  facts  came  to  light  during  these  re 
searches. 

"  Where's  all  the  oranges  gone  to  ?  "  said  Mrs. 
Sprowle.  "  I  expected  there'd  be  ever  so  many 


ELSIE  VENNEK.  155 

of  'em  left.  I  didn't  see  many  of  the  folks  eat- 
in'  oranges.  Where's  the  skins  of  'em  ?  There 
ought  to  be  six  dozen  orange-skins  round  on  the 
plates,  and  there  a'n't  one  dozen.  And  all  the 
small  cakes,  too,  and  all  the  sugar  things  that  was 
stuck  on  the  big  cakes.  Has  anybody  counted 
the  spoons  ?  Some  of  'em  got  swallered,  perhaps. 
I  hope  they  was  plated  ones,  if  they  did ! " 

The  failure  of  the  morning's  orange-crop  and 
the  deficit  in  other  expected  residual  delicacies 
were  not  very  difficult  to  account  for.  In  many 
(of  the  two-story  Rockland  families,  and  in  those 
favored  households  of  the  neighboring  villages 
whose  members  had  been  invited  to  the  great 
party,  there  was  a  very  general  excitement  among 
the  younger  people  on  the  morning  after  the  great 
event.  "  Did  y'  bring  home  somethin'  from  the 
party  ?  What  is  it  ?  What  is  it  ?  Is  it  frut- 
cake  ?  Is  it  nuts  and  oranges  and  apples  ?  Give 
me  some  !  Give  me  some ! "  Such  a  concert  of 
treble  voices  uttering  accents  like  these  had  not 
been  heard  since  the  great  Temperance  Festival 
with  the  celebrated  "  eolation  "  in  the  open  air 
under  the  trees  of  the  Parnassian  Grove, —  as  the 
place  was  christened  by  the  young  ladies  of  the 
Institute.  The  cry  of  the  children  was  not  in 
vain.  From  the  pockets  of  demure  fathers,  from 
the  bags  of  sharp-eyed  spinsters,  from  the  folded 
handkerchiefs  of  light-fingered  sisters,  from  the 
tall  hats  of  sly-winking  brothers,  there  was  a 
resurrection  of  the  missing  oranges  and  cakes  and 


156  KLSIIC   VKXXER. 

sugar -things  in  many  a  rejoicing  family-circle, 
enough  to  astonish  the  most  hardened  "  caterer  " 
that  ever  contracted  to  feed  a  thousand  people 
under  canvas. 

The  tender  recollection  of  those  dear  little  ones 
whom  extreme  youth  or  other  pressing  considera 
tions  detain  from  scenes  of  festivity  —  a  trait  of 
affection  by  no  means  uncommon  among  our 
thoughtful  people  —  dignifies  those  social  meet 
ings  where  it  is  manifested,  and  sheds  a  ray  of 
sunshine  on  our  common  nature.  It  is  "  an  oasis 
in  the  desert,"  —  to  use  the  striking  expression  of  , 
the  last  year's  "  Valedictorian  "  of  the  Apollinean 
Institute.  In  the  midst  of  so  much  that  is  purely 
selfish,  it  is  delightful  to  meet  such  disinterested 
care  for  others.  When  a  large  family  of  children 
are  expecting  a  parent's  return  from  an  entertain 
ment,  it  will  often  require  great  exertions  on  his 
part  to  freight  himself  so  as  to  meet  their  reasona 
ble  expectations.  A  few  rules  are  worth  remem 
bering  by  all  who  attend  anniversary  dinners  in 
Faneuil  Hall  or  elsewhere.  Thus  :  Lobsters' 
claws  are  always  acceptable  to  children  of  all 
ages.  Oranges  and  apples  are  to  be  taken  one 
at  a  time,  until  the  coat-pockets  begin  to  become 
inconveniently  heavy.  Cakes  are  injured  by  sit 
ting  upon  them ;  it  is,  therefore,  well  to  carry  a 
stout  tin  box  of  a  size  to  hold  as  many  pieces  as 
there  are  children  in  the  domestic  circle.  A  very 
pleasant  amusement,  at  the  close  of  one  of  these 
banquets,  is  grabbing  for  the  flowers  with  which 


ELSIE  VENNER.  157 

the  table  is  embellished.  These  will  please  the 
ladies  at  home  very  greatly,  and,  if  the  children 
are  at  the  same  time  abundantly  supplied  with 
fruits,  nuts,  cakes,  and  any  little  ornamental  arti 
cles  of  confectionery  which  are  of  a  nature  to.be 
unostentatiously  removed,  the  kind-hearted  parent 
will  make  a  whole  household  happy,  without 
any  additional  expense  beyond  the  outlay  for  his 
ticket. 

There  were  fragmentary  delicacies  enough  left, 
of  one  kind  and  another,  at  any  rate,  to  make  all 
the  Colonel's  family  uncomfortable  for  the  next 
week.  It  bid  fair  to  take  as  long  to  get  rid  of  the 
remains  of  the  great  party  as  it  had  taken  to  make 
ready  for  it. 

In  the  mean  time  Mr.  Bernard  had  been  dream 
ing,  as  young  men  dream,  of  gliding  shapes  with 
bright  eyes  and  burning  cheeks,  strangely  blended 
with  red  planets  and  hissing  meteors,  and,  shining 
over  all,  the  white,  unwandering  star  of  the  North, 
girt  with  its  tethered  constellations. 

After  breakfast  he  walked  into  the  parlor,  where 
he  found  Miss  Darley.  She  was  alone,  and,  hold 
ing  a  school-book  in  her  hand,  was  at  work  with 
one  of  the  morning's  lessons.  She  hardly  noticed 
him  as  he  entered,  being  very  busy  with  her  book, 
—  and  he.  paused  a  moment  before  speaking,  and 
looked  at  her  with  a  kind  of  reverence.  It  would 
not  have  been  strictly  true  to  call  her  beautiful. 
For  years,  —  since  her  earliest  womanhood, — • 
those  slender  hands  had  taken  the  bread  which 


158  ELSIE  VEXXER. 

repaid  the  toil  of  heart  and  brain  from  the  coarse* 
palms  which  offered  it  in  the  world's  rude  market. 
It  was  not  for  herself  alone  that  she  had  bartered 
away  the  life  of  her  youth,  that  she  had  breathed 
the  hot  air  of  school-rooms,  that  she  had  forced 
her  intelligence  to  posture  before  her  will,  as  the 
exigencies  of  her  place  required,  —  waking  to 
mental  labor,  —  sleeping  to  dream  of  problems, — 
rolling  up  the  stone  of  education  for  an  endless 
twelvemonth's  term,  to  find  it  at  the  bottom  of 
the  hill  again  when  another  year  called  her  to  its 
renewed  duties, — schooling  her  temper  in  unend 
ing  inward  and  outward  conflicts,  until  neither 
dulness  nor  obstinacy  nor  ingratitude  nor  inso 
lence  could  reach  her  serene  self-possession.  Not 
for  herself  alone.  Poorly  as  her  prodigal  labors 
were  repaid  in  proportion  to  the  waste  of  life 
they  cost,  her  value  was  too  well  established  to 
leave  her  without  what,  under  other  circumstances, 
would  have  been  a  more  than  sufficient  compensa 
tion.  But  there  were  others  who  looked  to  her  in 
their  need,  and  so  the  modest  fountain  which 
might  have  been  filled  to  its  brim  was  continually 
drained  through  silent-flowing,  hidden  sluices. 

Out  of  such  a  life,  inherited  from  a  race  which 
had  lived  in  conditions  not  unlike  her  own,  beauty, 
in  the  common  sense  of  the  term,  coujd  hardly 
find  leisure  to  develop  and  shape  itself,  j  For  it 
must  be  remembered,  that  symmetry  and  elegance 
of  features  and  figure,  like  perfectly  formed  crys 
tals  in  the  mineral  world,  are  reached  only  by  in- 


ELSIE  VENXEK.  159 

suring  a  certain  necessary  repose  to  individuals 
and  to  generations.]  Human  beauty  is  an  agri 
cultural  product  in  the  country,  growing  up  in 
men  and  women  as  in  corn  and  cattle,  where  the 
soil  is  good.  It  is  a  luxury  almost  monopolized 
by  the  rich  in  cities,  bred  under  glass  like  their 
forced  pine-apples  and  peaches.  Both  in  city  and 
country,  the  evolution  of  the  physical  harmonies 
which  make  music  to  our  eyes  requires  a  combi 
nation  of  favorable  circumstances,  of  which  alter 
nations  of  unburdened  tranquillity  with  intervals 
of  varied  excitement  of  mind  and  body  are  among 
the  most  important.  Where  sufficient  excitement 
is  wanting,  as  often  happens  in  the  country,  the 
features,  however  rich  in  red  and  white,  get  heavy, 
and  the  movements  sluggish ;  where  excitement 
is  furnished  in  excess,  as  is  frequently  the  case  in 
cities,  the  contours  and  colors  are  impoverished, 
and  the  nerves  begin  to  make  their  existence 
known  to  the  consciousness,  as  the  face  very  soon 
jnforms  us. 

Helen  Darley  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
have  possessed  the  kind  of  beauty  which  pleases 
the  common  taste.  Her  eye  was  calm,  sad-look 
ing,  her  features  very  still,  except  when  her  pleas* 
ant  smile  changed  them  for  a  moment,  all  her 
outlines  were  delicate,  her  voice  was  very  gentle, 
but  somewhat  subdued  by  years  of  thoughtful 
labor,  and  on  her  smooth  forehead  one  little 
hinted  line  whispered  already  that  Care  was  be 
ginning  to  mark  the  trace  which  Time  sooner  or 


160  ELSIE  VEXNER. 

later  would  make  a  furrow.  She  could  not  be  a 
beauty ;  if  she  had  been,  it  would  have  been 
much  harder  for  many  persons  to  be  interested  in 
her.  For,  although  in  the  abstract  we  all  love 
beauty,  and  although,  if  we  were  sent  naked 
souls  into  some  ultramundane  warehouse  of  soul 
less  bodies  and  told  to  select  one  to  our  liking,  we 
should  each  choose  a  handsome  one,  and  never 
think  of  the  consequences,  —  it  is  quite  certain 
that  beauty  carries  an  atmosphere  of  repulsion  as 
well  as  of  attraction  with  it,  alike  in  both  sexes. 
We  may  be  well  assured  that  there  are  many  per 
sons  who  no  more  think  of  specializing  their  love 
of  the  other  sex  upon  one  endowed  with  signal 
beauty,  than  they  think  of  wanting  great  dia 
monds  or  thousand-dollar  horses.  INo  man  or 
woman  can  appropriate  beauty  without  paying 
for  it/ —  in  endowments,  in  fortune,  in  position, 
in  self-surrender,  or  other  valuable  stock ;  and 
there  are  a  great  many  who  are  too  poor,  too 
ordinary,  too  humble,  too  busy,  too  proud,  to  pay 
any  of  these  prices  for  it.  So  the  unbeautiful 
get  many  more  lovers  than  the  beauties  ;  only,  as 
there  are  more  of  them,  their  lovers  are  spread 
thinner  and  do  not  make  so  much  show. 

The  young  master  stood  looking  at  Helen  Dar- 
ley  with  a  kind  of  tender  admiration.  She  was 
such  a  picture  of  the  martyr  by  the  slow  social 
combustive  process,  that  it  almost  seemed  to  him 
he  could  see  a  pale  lambent  nimbus  round  her 
head. 


ELSIE  VENNEK.  161 

"  I  did  not  see  you  at  the  great  party  last  even 
ing,"  he  said,  presently. 

She  looked  up  and  answered,  "  No.  I  have 
not  much  taste  for  such  large  companies.  Be 
sides,  I  do  not  feel  as  if  my  time  belonged  to  me 
after  it  has  been  paid  for.  There  is  always  some 
thing  to  do,  some  lesson  or  exercise,  —  and  it  so 
happened,  I  was  very  busy  last  night  with  the 
new  problems  in  geometry.  I  hope  you  had  a 
good  time." 

"  Very.  Two  or  three  of  our  girls  were  there. 
Rosa  Mil  burn.  What  a  beauty  she  is !  I  won 
der  what  she  feeds  on !  Wine  and  musk  and 
chloroform  and  coals  of  fire,  I  believe ;  I  didn't 
think  there  was  such  color  and  flavor  in  a  woman 
outside  the  tropics." 

Miss  Darley  smiled  rather  faintly ;  the  imagery 
was  not  just  to  her  taste  \\femineity  often  finds  it 
very  hard  to  accept  the  fact  of  muliebrity.  I 

«  Was  " ?  ' 

She  stopped  short ;  but  her  question  had  asked 
itself. 

"  Elsie  there  ?  She  was,  for  an  hour  or  so. 
She  looked  frightfully  handsome.  I  meant  to 
have  spoken  to  her,  but  she  slipped  away  before  I 
knew  it." 

"  I  thought  she  meant  to  go  to  the  party,"  said 
Miss  Darley.  «  Did  she  look  at  you  ?  " 

"  She  did.     Why  ?  " 

"  And  you  did  not  speak  to  her?  " 

"  No.     I  should  have  spoken  to  her,  but  she 

VOL.  I.  11 


162  ELSIE  VEXNER. 

was  gone  when  I  looked  for  her.  A  strange  creat 
ure  !  Isn't  there  an  odd  sort  of  fascination  about 
her  ?  You  have  not  explained  all  the  mystery 
about  the  girl.  What  does  she  come  to  this 
school  for  ?  She  seems  to  do  pretty  much  as  she 
likes  about  studying." 

Miss  Darley  answered  in  very  low  tones.  "  It 
was  a  fancy  of  hers  to  come,  and  they  let  her 
have  her  way.  I  don't  know  what  there  is  about 
her,  except  that  she  seems  to  take  my  life  out  of 
me  when  she  looks  at  me.  I  don't  like  to  ask 
other  people  about  our  girls.  She  says  very  little 
to  anybody,  and  studies,  or  makes  believe  to  study, 
almost  what  she  likes.  I  don't  know  what  she 
is,"  (Miss  Darley  laid  her  hand,  trembling,  on  the 
young  master's  sleeve,)  "  but  I  can  tell  when  she 
is  in  the  room  without  seeing  or  hearing  her.  Oh, 
Mr.  Langdon,  I  am  weak  and  nervous,  and  no 
doubt  foolish,  —  but  —  if  there  were  women  now, 
as  in  the  days  of  our  Saviour,  possessed  of  devils, 
I  should  think  there  was  something  not  human 
looking  out  of  Elsie  Venner's  eyes ! " 

The  poor  girl's  breast  rose  and  fell  tumultuously 
as  she  spoke,  and  her  voice  labored,  as  if  some 
obstruction  were  rising  in  her  throat. 

A  scene  might  possibly  have  come  of  it,  but  the 
door  opened.  Mr.  Silas  Peckham.  Miss  Darley 
got  away  as  soon  as  she  well  could. 

"  Why  did  not  Miss  Darley  go  to  the  party  last 
evening  ?  "  said  Mr.  Bernard. 

"  Well,  the  fact  is,"  answered  Mr.  Silas  Peck- 


ELSIE  VESTNER.  163 

ham,  "  Miss  Barley,  she 's  pooty  much  took  up 
with  the  school.  She's  an  industris  young  wom 
an, —  yis,  she  is  industris,  —  but  perhaps  she  a'n't 
quite  so  spry  a  worker^  as  some.  Maybe,  consid- 
erin'  she's  paid  for  her  time,  she  isn't  fur  out  o' 
the  way  in  occoopyin'  herself  evenin's,  —  that  is, 
if  so  be  she  a'n't  smart  enough  to  finish  up  all  her 
work  in  the  daytime.  Edoocation  is  the  great  busi 
ness  of  the  Institoot.  Amoosements  are  objec's 
of  a  secondary  natur',  accordin'  to  my  v'oo." 
[The  unspellable  pronunciation  of  this  word  is 
the  touchstone  of  New  England  Brahminism.] 

Mr.  Bernard  drew  a  deep  breath,  his  thin  nos 
trils  dilating,  as  if  the  air  did  not  rush  in  fast 
enough  to  cool  his  blood,  while  Silas  Peckham 
was  speaking.  The  Head  of  the  Apollinean  In 
stitute  delivered  himself  of  these  judicious  senti 
ments  in  that  peculiar  acid,  penetrating  tone, 
thickened  with  a  nasal  twang,  which  not  rarely 
becomes  hereditary  after  three  or  four  generations 
raised  upon  east  winds,  salt  fish,  and  large,  white- 
bellied,  pickled  cucumbers.  He  spoke  deliberate 
ly,  as  if  weighing  his  words  well,  so  that,  during 
his  few  remarks,  Mr.  Bernard  had  time  for  a  men 
tal  accompaniment  with  variations,  accented  by 
certain  bodily  changes,  which  escaped  Mr.  Peck- 
ham's  observation.  First  there  was  a  feeling  of 
disgust  and  shame  at  hearing  Helen  Darley 
spoken  of  like  a  dumb  working  animal.  That 
sent  the  blood  up  into  his  cheeks.  Then  the  slur 
upon  her  probable  want  of  force  —  her  incapacity, 


164  ELSIE  VEXNER. 

who  made  the  character  of  the  school  and  left 
this  man  to  pocket  its  profits  —  sent  a  thrill  of 
the  old  Wentworth  fire  through  him,  so  that  his 
muscles  hardened,  his  hands  closed,  and  he  took 
the  measure  of  Mr.  Silas  Peckham,  to  see  if  his 
head  would  strike  the  wall  in  case  he  went  over 
backwards  all  of  a  sudden.  This  would  not  do, 
of  course,  and  so  the  thrill  passed  off  and  the 
muscles  softened  again.  Then  came  that  state 
of  tenderness  in  the  heart,  overlying  wrath  in  the 
stomach,  in  which  the  eyes  grow  moist  like  a 
woman's,  and  there  is  also  a  great  boiling-up  of 
objectionable  terms  out  of  the  deep-water  vocabu 
lary,  so  that  Prudence  and  Propriety  and  all  the 
other  pious  Ps  have  to  jump  upon  the  lid  of 
speech  to  keep  them  from  boiling  over  into  fierce 
articulation.  All  this  was  internal,  chiefly,  and 
of  course  not  recognized  by  Mr.  Silas  Peckham. 
The  idea,  that  any  full-grown,  sensible  man 
should  have  any  other  notion  than  that  of  getting 
the  most  work  for  the  least  money  out  of  his  as 
sistants,  had  never  suggested  itself  to  him. 

Mr.  Bernard  had  gone  through  this  paroxysm, 
and  cooled  down,  in  the  period  while  Mr.  Peck- 
ham  was  uttering  these  words  in  his  thin,  shal 
low  whine,  twanging  up  into  the  frontal  sinuses. 
What  was  the  use  of  losing  his  temper  and 
throwing  away  his  place,  and  so,  among  the  con 
sequences  which  would  necessarily  -follow,  leav 
ing  the  poor  lady- teacher  without  a  friend  to 
stand  by  her  ready  to  lay  his  hand  on  the  grand- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  165 

inquisitor  before  the  windlass  of  his  rack  had 
taken  one  turn  too  many  ? 

"  No  doubt,  Mr.  Peckham,"  he  said,  in  a  grave, 
calm  voice,  "  there  is  a  great  deal  of  work  to  be 
done  in  the  school ;  but  perhaps  we  can  distrib 
ute  the  duties  a  little  more  evenly  after  a  time. 
I  shall  look  over  the  girls'  themes  myself,  after 
this  week.  Perhaps  there  will  be  some  other 
parts  of  her  labor  that  I  can  take  on  myself. 
We  can  arrange  a  new  programme  of  studies 
and  recitations." 

"  We  can  do  that,"  said  Mr.  Silas  Peckham. 
"  But  I  don't  propose  mater'lly  alterin'  Miss  Bar 
ley's  dooties.  I  don't  think  she  works  to  hurt 
herself.  Some  of  the  Trustees  have  proposed 
interdoosin'  new  branches  of  study,  and  I  expect 
you  will  be  pooty  much  occoopied  with  the  doo 
ties  that  belong  to  your  place.  On  the  Sahbath 
you  will  be  able  to  attend  divine  service  three 
times,  which  is  expected  of  our  teachers.  I  shall 
continoo  myself  to  give  Sahbath  Scriptur'-read- 
in's  to  the  young  ladies.  That  is  a  solemn  dooty 
I  can't  make  up  my  mind  to  commit  to  other 
people.  My  teachers  enjoy  the  Lord's  day  as  a 
day  of  rest.  In  it  they  do  no  manner  of  work,  — 
except  in  cases  of  necessity  or  mercy,  such  as 
fillin'  out  diplomas,  or  when  we  git  crowded  jest 
at  the  end  of  a  term,  or  when  there  is  an  extry 
number  of  p'oopils,  or  other  Providential  call  to 
dispense  with  the  ordinance." 

Mr.  Bernard  had  a  fine  glow  in  his  cheeks  by 


166  ELSIE  VENNER. 

this  time,  —  doubtless  kindled  by  the  thought  of 
the  kind  consideration  Mr.  Peckham  showed  for 
his  subordinates  in  allowing  them  the  between- 
meeting-time  on  Sundays  except  for  some  special 
reason.  But  the  morning  was  wearing  away ; 
so  he  went  to  the  school-room,  taking  leave  very 
properly  of  his  respected  principal,  who  soon  took 
his  hat  and  departed. 

Mr.  Peckham  visited  certain  "  stores  "  or  shops, 
where  he  made  inquiries  after  various  articles  in 
the  provision-line,  and  effected  a  purchase  or  two. 
Two  or  three  barrels  of  potatoes,  which  had 
sprouted  in  a  promising  way,  he  secured  at  a 
bargain.  A  side  of  feminine  beef  was  also  ob 
tained  at  a  low  figure.  He  was  entirely  satisfied 
with  a  couple  of  barrels  of  flour,  which,  being  in 
voiced  "  slightly  damaged,"  were  to  be  had  at  a 
reasonable  price. 

After  this,  Silas  Peckham  felt  in  good  spirits. 
He  had  done  a  pretty  stroke  of  business.  It 
came  into  his  head  whether  he  might  not  follow 
it  up  with  a  still  more  brilliant  speculation.  So 
he  turned  his  steps  in  the  direction  of  Colonel 
Sprowle's. 

It  was  now  eleven  o'clock,  and  the  battle-field 
of  last  evening  was  as  we  left  it.  Mr.  Peckham's 
visit  was  unexpected,  perhaps  not  very  well  timed, 
but  the  Colonel  received  him  civilly. 

"  Beautifully  lighted, —  these  rooms  last  night! " 
said  Mr.'  Peckham.  "  Winter-strained  ?  " 

The  Colonel  nodded. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  167 

"  How  much  do  you  pay  for  your  winter- 
strained  ?  " 

The  Colonel  told  him  the  price. 

"  Very  hahnsome  supper,  —  very  hahnsome  ! 
Nothin'  ever  seen  like  it  in  Rockland.  Must 
have  been  a  great  heap  of  things  left  over." 

The  compliment  was  not  ungrateful,  and  the 
Colonel  acknowledged  it  by  smiling  and  saying, 
"  I  should  think  the'  was  a  trifle !  Come  and 
look." 

When  Silas  Peckham  saw  how  many  delica 
cies  had  survived  the  evening's  conflict,  his  com 
mercial  spirit  rose  at  once  to  the  point  of  a 
proposal. 

"  Colonel  Sprowle,"  said  he,  "  there's  meat  and 
cakes  and  pies  and  pickles  enough  on  that  table 
to  spread  a  hahnsome  eolation.  If  you'd  like  to 
trade  reasonable,  I  think  perhaps  I  should  be 
willin'  to  take  'em  off  your  hands.  There's  been 
a  talk  about  our  havin'  a  celebration  in  the  Par 
nassian  Grove,  and  I  think  I  could  work  in  what 
your  folks  don't  want  and  make  myself  whole  by 
chargin'  a  small  sum  for  tickets.  Broken  meats, 
of  course,  a'n't  of  the  same  valoo  as  fresh  pro 
visions  ;  so  I  think  you  might  be  willin'  to  trade 
reasonable." 

Mr.  Peckham  paused  and  rested  on  his  propo 
sal.  It  would  not,  perhaps,  have  been  very  ex 
traordinary,  if  Colonel  Sprowle  had  entertained 
the  proposition.  There  is  no  telling  beforehand 
how  such  things  will  strike  people.  It  didn't 


168  ELSIE  VKXXKR. 

happen  to  strike  the  Colonel  favorably.  He  had 
a  little  red-blooded  manhood  in  him. 

"  Sell  you  them  things  to  make  a  eolation  out 
of?"  the  Colonel  replied.  "Walk  up  to  that 
table,  Mr.  Peckham,  and  help  yourself!  Fill 
your  pockets,  Mr.  Peckham !  Fetch  a  basket, 
and  our  hired  folks  shall  fill  it  full  for  ye !  Send  a 
cart,  if  y'  like,  V  carry  off  them  leavin's  to  make 
a  celebration  for  your  pupils  with  !  Only  let  me 
tell  ye  this :  —  as  sure's  my  name's  Hezekiah 
Spraowle,  you'll  be  known  through  the  taown 
'n'  through  the  caounty,  from  that  day  forrard,  as 
the  Principal  of  the  Broken- Victuals  Institoot !  " 

Even  provincial  human-nature  sometimes  has 
a  touch  of  sublimity  about  it.  Mr.  Silas  Peck- 
ham  had  gone  a  little  deeper  than  he  meant,  and 
come  upon  the  "  hard  pan,"  as  the  well-diggers 
call  it,  of  the  Colonel's  character,  before  he  thought 
of  it.  A  militia-colonel  standing  on  his  senti 
ments  is  not  to  be  despised.  That  was  shown 
pretty  well  in  New  England  two  or  three  gen 
erations  ago.  There  were  a  good  many  plain  offi 
cers  that  talked  about  their  "rigiment"  and  their 
"  caounty "  who  knew  very  well  how  to  say 
"  Make  ready  !  "  "  Take  aim  !  "  "  Fire  ! "  —  in 
the  face  of  a  line  of  grenadiers  with  bullets  in 
their  guns  and  bayonets  on  them.  And  though 
a  rustic  uniform  is  not  always  unexceptionable 
in  its  cut  and  trimmings,  yet  there  was  many  an 
ill-made  coat  in  those  old  times  that  was  good 
enough  to  be  shown  to  the  enemy's  front  rank, 


ELSIE  VENTSTER.  169 

too  often  to  be  left  on  the  field  with  a  round  hole 
in  its  left  lapel  that  matched  another  going  right 
through  the  brave  heart  of  the  plain  country  cap 
tain  or  major  or  colonel  who  was  buried  in  it 
under  the  crimson  turf. 

Mr.  Silas  Peckham  said  little  or  nothing.  His 
sensibilities  were  not  acute,  but  he  perceived  that 
he  had  made  a  miscalculation.  He  hoped  that 
there  was  no  offence,  —  thought  it  might  have 
been  mutooally  agreeable,  conclooded  he  would 
give  up  the  idee  of  a  eolation,  and  backed  him 
self  out  as  if  unwilling  to  expose  the  less  guarded 
aspect  of  his  person  to  the  risk  of  accelerating 
impulses. 

The  Colonel  shut  the  door,  —  cast  his  eye  on 
the  toe  of  his  right  boot,  as  if  it  had  had  a  strong 
temptation, — looked  at  his  watch,  then  round 
the  room,  and,  going  to  a  cupboard,  swallowed  a 
glass  of  deep-red  brandy  and  water  to  compose 
his  feelings. 


170  ELSIE  VENDER. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   DOCTOR    ORDERS   THE   BEST    SULKY. 
(With  a  Digression  on  "Hired  Help") 

"  ABEL  !  Slip  Cassia  into  the  new  sulky,  and 
fetch  her  round." 

Abel  was  Dr.  Kittredge's  hired  man.  He  was 
born  in  New  Hampshire,  a  queer  sort  of  a  State, 
with  fat  streaks  of  soil  and  population  where 
they  breed  giants  in  mind  and  body,  and  lean 
streaks  which  export  imperfectly  nourished  young 
men  with  promising  but  neglected  appetites,  who 
may  be  found  in  great  numbers  in  all  the  large 
towns,  or  could  be  until  of  late  years,  when  they 
have  been  half  driven  out  of  their  favorite  base 
ment-stories  by  foreigners,  and  half  coaxed  away 
from  them  by  California.  New  Hampshire  is  in 
more  than  one  sense  the  Switzerland  of  New 
England.  The  "  Granite  State  "  being  naturally 
enough  deficient  in  pudding-stone,  its  children  are 
apt  to  wander  southward  in  search  of  that  de 
posit,  —  in  the  unpetrified  condition. 

Abel  Stebbins  was  a  good  specimen  of  that 
extraordinary  hybrid  or  mule  between  democ- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  171 

racy  and  chrysocracy,  a  native-born  New-England 
serving-man.  The  Old  World  has  nothing  at  all 
like  him.  He  is  at  once  an  emperor  and  a  sub 
ordinate.  In  one  hand  he  holds  one  five-millionth 
part  (be  the  same  more  or  less)  of  the  power  that 
sways  the  destinies  of  the  .Great  Republic.  His 
other  hand  is  in  your  boot,  which  he  is  about  to 
polish.  It  is  impossible  to  turn  a  fellow-citizen 
whose  vote  may  make  his  master  —  say,  rather, 
employer — Governor  or  President,  or  who  may 
be  one  or  both  himself,  into  a  flunky.  That 
article  must  be  imported  ready-made  from  other 
centres  of  civilization.  When  a  New  Englander 
has  lost  his  self-respect  as  a  citizen  and  as  a  man, 
he  is  demoralized,  and  cannot  be  trusted  with  the 
money  to  pay  for  a  dinner. 

It  may  be  supposed,  therefore,  that  this  frac 
tional  emperor,  this  continent-shaper,  ^finds  his 
position  awkward  when  he  goes  into  service,  and 
that  his  employer  is  apt  to  find  it  still  more  em 
barrassing.  It  is  always  under  protest  that  the 
hired  man  does  his  duty.  Every  act  of  service  is 
subject  to  the  drawback,  "  I  am  as  good  as  you 
are."  This  is  so  common,  at  least,  as  almost  to 
be  the  rule,  and  partly  accounts  for  the  rapid  dis 
appearance  of  the  indigenous  "domestic"  from 
the  basements  above  mentioned.  Paleontologists 
will  by-and-by  be  examining  the  floors  of  our 
kitchens  for  tracks  of  the  extinct  native  spe 
cies  of  serving-man.  The  female  of  the  same 
race  is  fast  dying  out ;  indeed,  the  time  is  not  far 


172  ELSIE  VENNER. 

distant  when  all  the  varieties  of  young  woman 
will  have  vanished  from  New  England,  as  the 
dodo  has  perished  in  the  Mauritius.  The  young 
lady  is  all  that  we  shall  have  left,  and  the  mop 
and  duster  of  the  last  Alrnira  or  Lo'izy  will  be 
stared  at  by  generations  of  Bridgets  and  Noras 
as  that  famous  head  and  foot  of  the  lost  bird  are 
stared  at  in  the  Ashmolean  Museum. 

Abel  Stebbins,  the  Doctor's  man,  took  the  true 
American  view  of  his  difficult  position.  He  sold 
his  time  to  the  Doctor,  and,  having  sold  it,  he  took 
care  to  fulfil  his  half  of  the  bargain.  The  Doctor, 
on  his  part,  treated  him,  not  like  a  gentleman, 
because  one  does  not  order  a  gentleman  to  bring 
up  his  horse  or  run  his  errands,  but  he  treated  him 
like  a  man.  Every  order  was  given  in  courteous 
terms.  His  reasonable  privileges  were  respected 
as  much  as  if  they  had  been  guaranteed  under 
hand  and  seal.  The  Doctor  lent  him  books  from 
his  own  library,  and  gave  him  all  friendly  coun 
sel,  as  if  he  were  a  son  or  a  younger  brother. 

Abel  had  Revolutionary  blood  in  his  veins,  and 
though  he  saw  fit  to  "  hire  out,"  he  could  never 
stand  the  word  "  servant,"  or  consider  himself  the 
inferior  one  of  the  two  high  contracting  parties. 
When  he  came  to  live  with  the  Doctor,  he  made 
Up  his  mind  he  would  dismiss  the  old  gentleman, 
if  he  did  not  behave  afccording  to  his  notions  of 
propriety.  .  But  he  soon  found  that  the  Doctor 
was  one  of  the  right  sort,  and  so  determined  to 
keep  him.  The  Doctor  soon  found,  on  his  side, 


ELSIE  VENNER.  173 

that  he  had  a  trustworthy,  intelligent  fellow,  who 
would  be  invaluable  to  him,  if  he  only  let  him 
have  his  own  way  of  doing  what  was  to  be  done 

The  Doctor's  hired  ma'n  had  not  the  manners 
of  a  French  valet.  He  was  grave  and  taciturn 
for  the  most  part,  he  .never  bowed  and  rarely 
smiled,  but  was  always  at  work  in  the  daytime 
and  always  reading  in  the  evening.  He  was  hos 
tler,  and  did  all  the  housework  that  a  man  could 
properly  do,  would  go  to  the  door  or  "  tend  table," 
bought  the  provisions  for  the  family,  —  in  short, 
did  almost  everything  for  them  but  get  their  cloth 
ing.  There  was  no  office  in  a  perfectly  appointed 
household,  from  that  of  steward  down  to  that  of 
stable-boy,  which  he  did  not  cheerfully  assume. 
His  round  of  work  not  consuming  all  his  energies, 
he  must  needs  cultivate  the  Doctor's  garden,  which 
he  kept  in  one  perpetual  bloom,  from  the  blowing 
of  the  first  crocus  to  the  fading  of  the  last  dahlia. 

This  garden  was  Abel's  poem.  Its  half-dozen 
beds  were  so  many  cantos.  Nature  crowded  them 
for  him  with  imagery  such  as  no  Laureate  could 
copy  in  the  cold  mosaic  of  language.  The  rhythm 
of  alternating  dawn  and  sunset,  the  strophe  and 
antistrophe  still  perceptible  through  all  the  sudden 
shifts  of  our  dithyrambic  seasons  and  echoed  in 
corresponding  floral  harmonies,  made  melody  in 
the.  soul  of  Abel,  the  plain  serving-man.  It  soft 
ened  his  whole  otherwise  rigid  aspect.  He  wor 
shipped  God  according  to  the  strict  way  of  his 
fathers;/ but  a  florist's  Puritanism  is  always  col- 


174  ELSIE  VENNER. 

ored  by  the  petals  of  his  flowers,  —  and  Nature 
never  shows  him  a  black  corolla.  J 

He  may  or  may  not  figure  again  in  this  narra 
tive  ;  but  as  there  must  be  some  who  confound 
the  New- En  gland  hired  man,  native-born,  with 
the  servant  of  foreign  bijrth,  and  as  there  is  the 
difference  of  two  continents  and  two  civilizations 
between  them,  it  did  not  seem  fair  to  let  Abel 
bring  round  the  Doctor's  mare  and  sulky  without 
touching  his  features  in  half-shadow  into  our 
background. 

The  Doctor's  mare,  Cassia,  was  so  called  by 
her  master  from  her  cinnamon  color,  cassia  being 
one  of  the  professional  names  for  that  spice  or 
drug.  She  was  of  the  shade  we  call  sorrel,  or, 
as  an  Englishman  would  perhaps  say,  chestnut, 
—  a  genuine  "  Morgan  "  mare,  with  a  low  fore 
head,  as  is  common  in  this  breed,  but  with  strong 
quarters  and  flat  hocks,  well  ribbed  up,  with  a 
good  eye  and  a  pair  of  lively  ears,  —  a  first-rate 
doctor's  beast,  —  would  stand  until  her  harness 
dropped  off  her  back  at  the  door  of  a  tedious 
case,  and  trot  over  hill  and  dale  thirty  miles  in 
three  hours,  if  there  was  a  child  in  the  next  coun 
ty  with  a  bean  in  its  windpipe  and  the  Doctor 
gave  her  a  hint  of  the  fact.  Cassia  was  not  large, 
but  she  had  a  good  deal  of  action,  and  was  the 
Doctor's  show-horse.  There  were  two  other  ani 
mals  in  his  stable  :  Quassia  or  Quashy,  the  black 
horse,  and  Caustic,  the  old  bay,  with  whom  he 
jogged  round  the  village. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  .  175 

"  A  long  ride  to-day? "  said  Abel,  as  he  brought 
up  the  equipage. 

"Just  out  of  the  village — that's  all.  —  There's 
a  kink  in  her  mane,  —  pull  it  out,  will  you  ?  " 

"  Goin'  to  visit  some  of  the  great  folks,"  Abel 
said  to  himself.  "  Wonder  who  it  is."  —  Then  to 
the  Doctor,  —  "  Anybody  get  sick  at  Sprowles's  ? 
They  say  Deacon  Soper  had  a  fit,  after  eatin' 
some  o'  their  frozen  victuals." 

The  Doctor  smiled.  He  guessed  the  Deacon 
would  do  well  enough.  He  was  only  going  to 
ride  over  to  the  Dudley  mansion-house. 


176  ELSIE  TENNER. 


CHAPTER   X. 

THE  DOCTOR  CALLS  ON  ELSIE  VENNEB. 

IP  that  primitive  physician,  CHIRON,  M.  D.,  ap 
pears  as  a  Centaur,  as  we  look  at  him  through 
the  lapse  of  thirty  centuries,  the  modern  country- 
doctor,  if  he  could  be  seen  about  thirty  miles  off, 
could  not  be  distinguished  from  a  wheel-animal 
cule.  He  inhabits  a  wheel-carriage.  He  thinks 
of  stationary  dwellings  as  Long  Tom  Coffin  did 
of  land  in  general ;  a  house  may  be  well  enough 
for  incidental  purposes,  but  for  a  "  stiddy "  resi 
dence  give  him  a  "  kerridge."  If  he  is  classified 
in  tjje  Linnaean  scale,  he  must  be  set  down  thus  : 
Genus  Homo;  Species  Rotifer  infusorius,  —  the 
wheel-animal  of  infusions. 

The  Dudley  mansion  was  not  a  mile  from  the 
Doctor's ;  but  it  never  occurred  to  him  to  think 
of  walking  to  see  any  of  his  patients'  families, 
if  he  had  any  professional  object  in  his  visit. 
Whenever  the  narrow  sulky  turned  in  at  a  gate, 
the  rustic  who  was  digging  potatoes,  or  hoeing 
corn,  or  swishing"  through  the  grass  with  his  scythe, 
in  wave-like  crescents,  or  stepping  short  behind  a 
loaded  wheelbarrow,  or  trudging  lazily  by  the  side 


ELSIE  VENNEE.  177 

of  the  swinging,  loose-throated,  short-legged  oxen, 
rocking  along  the  road  as  if  they  had  just  been 
landed  after  a  three-months'  voyage,  —  the  toiling 
native,  whatever  he  was  doing,  stopped  and  looked 
up  at  the  house  the  Doctor  was  visiting. 

"  Somebody  sick  over  there  t'  Haynes's.  Guess 
th'  old  man's  ailin'  ag'in.  Winder's  haaf-way 
open  in  the  chamber,  —  shouldn'  wonder  'f  he 
was  dead  and  laid  aout.  Docterin'  a'n't  no  use, 
when  y'  see  th'  winders  open  like  that.  "Wahl, 
money  a'n't  much  to  speak  of  to  th'  old  man 
naow !  He  don'  want  but  tew  cents,  —  'n'  old 
Widah  Peake,  she  knows  what  he  wants  them 
for!" 

Or  again,  — 

"  Measles  raound  pooty  thick.  Briggs's  folks 
buried  two  children  with  'em  laas'  week.  Th' 
ol'  Doctor,  he'd  h'  ker'd  'em  threugh.  Struck  in 
'n'  p'dooced  mo't'f 'cation,  —  so  they  say." 

This  is  only  meant  as  a  sample  of  the  kind  of 
way  they  used  to  think  or  talk,  when  the  narrow 
sulky  turned  in  at  the  gate  of  some  house  where 
there  was  a  visit  to  be  made. 

Oh,  that  narrow  sulky!  What  hopes,  what 
fears,  what  comfort,  what  anguish,  what  despair, 
in  the  roll  of  its  coming  or  its  parting  wheels ! 
In  the  spring,  when  the  old  people  get  the  coughs 
which  give  them  a  few  shakes  and  their  lives  drop 
in  pieces  like  the  ashes  of  a  burned  thread  which 
have  kept  the  threadlike  shape  until  they  were 
stirred, —  in  the  hot  summer  noons,  when  the 

VOL.  i.  12 


178  ELSIE  VENNER. 

strong  man  comes  in  from  the  fields,  like  the  son 
of  the  Shunamite,  crying,  "  My  head,  my  head," 
—  in  the  dying  autumn  days,  when  youth  and 
maiden  lie  fever-stricken  in  many  a  household, 
still-faced,  dull-eyed,  dark-flushed,  dry-lipped,  low- 
muttering  in  their  daylight  dreams,  their  fingers 
moving  singly  like  those  of  slumbering  harpers, — 
in  the  dead  winter,  when  the  white  plague  of  the 
North  has  caged  its  wasted  victims,  shuddering 
as  they  think  of  the  frozen  soil  which  must  be 
quarried  like  rock  to  receive  them^if  their  perpet 
ual  convalescence  should  happen  to  be  interfered 
with  by  any  untoward  accident,! —  at  every  sea 
son,  the  narrow  sulky  roUed  round  freighted  with 
unmeasured  burdens  of  joy  and  woe. 

The  Doctor  drove  along  the  southern  foot  of 
The  Mountain.  The  "  Dudley  mansion "  was 
near  the  eastern  edge  of  this  declivity,  where  it 
rose  steepest,  with  baldest  cliffs  and  densest 
patches  of  overhanging  wood.  It  seemed  almost 
too  steep  to  climb,  but  a  practised  eye  could  see 
from  «a  distance  the  zigzag  lines  of  the  sheep- 
paths  which  scaled  it  like  miniature  Alpine  roads. 
A  few  hundred  feet  up  The  Mountain's  side  was 
a  dark,  deep  dell,  unwooded,  save  for  a  few  spin 
dling,  crazy-looking  hackmatacks  or  native  larches, 
with  pallid  green  tufts  sticking  out  fantastically 
all  over  them.  It  shelved  so  deeply,  that,  while 
the  hemlock-tassels  were  swinging  on  the  trees 
around  its  border,  all  would  be  still  at  its  springy 
bottom,  save  that  perhaps  a  single  fern  would 


ELSIE  VENDER.  179 

wave  slowly  backward  and  forward  like  a  sabre, 
with  a  twist  as  of  a  feathered  oar,  —  and  this, 
when  not  a  breath  could  be  felt,  and  every  other 
stem  and  blade  were  motionless.  There  was  an 
old  story  of  one  having  perished  here  in  the  win 
ter  of  '86,  and  his  body  having  been  found  in  the 
spring,  —  whence  its  common  name  of  "  Dead- 
Man's  Hollow."  Higher  up  there  were  huge 
cliffs  with  chasms,  and,  it  was  thought,  concealed 
caves,  where  in  old  times  they  said  that  Tories 
lay  hid,  —  some  hinted  not  without  occasional  aid 
and  comfort  from  the  Dudleys  then  living  in  the 
mansion-house.  Still  higher  and  farther  west  lay 
the  accursed  ledge,  —  shunned  by  ah1,  unless  it 
were  now  and  then  a  daring  youth,  or  a  wander 
ing  naturalist  who  ventured  to  its  edge  in  the 
hope  of  securing  some  infantile  Crotalus  durissus, 
who  had  not  yet  cut  his  poison-teeth. 

Long,  long  ago,  in  old  Colonial  times,  the  Hon 
orable  Thomas  Dudley,  Esquire,  a  man  of  note 
and  name  and  great  resources,  allied  by  descent 
to  the  family  of  "  Tom  Dudley,"  as  the  early 
Governor  is  sometimes  irreverently  called  by  our 
most  venerable,  but  still  youthful  antiquary, — 
and  to  the  other  public  Dudleys,  of  course,  —  of 
all  of  whom  he  made  small  account,  as  being 
himself  an  English  gentleman,  with  little  taste^br 
the  splendors  of  provincial  office, —  early  in  the 
last  century,  Thomas  Dudley  had  built  this  man 
sion.  For  several  generations  it  had  been  dwelt 
in  by  descendants  of  the  same  name,  but  soon 


180  ELSIE  VENDER. 

after  the  Revolution  it  passed  by  marriage  into 
the  hands  of  the  Venners,  by  whom  it  had  ever 
since  been  held  and  tenanted. 

As  the  Doctor  turned  an  angle  in  the  road,  all 
at  once  the  stately  old  house  rose  before  him.  It 
was  a  skilfully  managed  effect,  as  it  well  might 
be,  for  it  was  no  vulgar  English  architect  who  had 
planned  the  mansion  and  arranged  its  position 
and  approach.  The  old  house  rose  before  the 
Doctor,  crowning  a  terraced  garden,  flanked  at  the 
left  by  an  avenue  of  tall  elms.  The  flower-beds 
were  edged  with  box,  which  diffused  around  it 
that  dreamy  balsamic  odor,  full  of  ante-natal  rem 
iniscences  of  a  lost  Paradise,  dimly  fragrant  as 
might  be  the  bdellium  of  ancient  Havilah,  the 
land  compassed  by  the  river  Pison  that  went  out 
of  Eden.  The  garden  was  somewhat  neglected, 
but  not  in  disgrace,  —  and  in  the  time  of  tulips 
and  hyacinths,  of  roses,  of  "  snowballs,"  of  hon 
eysuckles,  of  lilacs,  of  syringas,  it  was  rich  with 
blossoms. 

From  the  front-windows  of  the  mansion  the 
eye  reached  a  far  blue  mountain-summit,  —  no 
rounded  heap,  such  as  often  shuts  in  a  village- 
landscape,  but  a  sharp  peak,  clean-angled  as  As- 
cutney  from  the  Dartmouth  green.  A  wide  gap 
thiough  miles  of  woods  had  opened  this  distant 
view,  and  showed  more,  perhaps,  than  all  the  la 
bors  of  the  architect  and  the  landscape-gardener 
the  large  style  of  the  early  Dudleys. 

The  great  stone-chimney  of  the  mansion-house 


ELSIE   YEXNER.  181 

was  the  centre  from  which  all  the  artificial  feat 
ures  of  the  scene  appeared  to  flow.  The  roofs, 
the  gables,  the  dormer-windows,  the  porches,  the 
clustered  offices  in  the  rear,  all  seemed  to  crowd 
about  the  great  chimney.  To  this  central  pillar 
the  paths  all  converged.  The  single  poplar  be 
hind  the  house,  —  Nature  is  jealous  of  proud 
chimneys,  and  always  loves  to  put  a  poplar  near 
one,  so  that  it  may  fling  a  leaf  or  two  down  its 
black  throat  every  autumn,  —  the  one  tall  poplar 
behind  the  house  seemed  to  nod  and  whisper  to 
the  grave  square  column,  the  elms  to  sway  their 
branches  towards  it.  And  when  the  blue  smoke 
rose  from  its  summit,  it  seemed  to  be  wafted 
away  to  join  the  azure  haze  which  hung  around 
the  peak  in  the  far  distance,  so  that  both  should 
bathe  in  a  common  atmosphere. 

Behind  the  house  were  clumps  of  lilacs  with  a 
century's  growth  upon  them,  and  looking  more 
like  trees  than  like  shrubs.  Shaded  by  a  group 
of  these  was  the  ancient  well,  of  huge  circuit, 
and  with  a  low  arch  opening  out  of  its  wall 
about  ten  feet  below  the  surface,  —  whether  the 
door  of  a  crypt  for  the  concealment  of  treasure, 
or  of  a  subterranean  passage,  or  merely  of  a  vault 
for  keeping  provisions  cool  in  hot  weather,  opin 
ions  differed. 

On  looking  at  the  house,  it  was  plain  that  it 
was  built  with  Old- World  notions  of  strength 
and  durability,  and,  so  far  as  might  be,  with 
Old- World  materials.  The  hinges  of  the  doors 


182  ELSIE  VENNKK. 

stretched  out  like  arms,  instead  of  like  hands,  as 
we  make  them.  The  bolts  were  massive  enough 
for  a  donjon-keep.  The  small  window-panes 
were  actually  inclosed  in  the  wood  of  the  sashes, 
instead  of  being  stuck  to  them  with  putty,  as  in 
our  modern  windows.  The  broad  staircase  was 
of  easy  ascent,  and  was  guarded  by  quaintly 
turned  and  twisted  balusters.  The  ceilings  of 
the  two  rooms  of  state  were  moulded  with  me 
dallion-portraits  and  rustic  figures,  such  as  may 
have  been  seen  by  many  readers  in  the  famous 
old  Philipse  house, — Washington's  headquarters, 

—  in  the  town  of  Yonkers.     The  fire-places,  wor 
thy  of  the  wide-throated  central  chimney,  were 
bordered  by  pictured  tiles,  some  of   them  with 
Scripture  stories,  some  with  Watteau-like  figures, 

—  tall  damsels  in   slim  waists  and  with  spread 
enough  of  skirt  for  a  modern  ballroom,  with  bow 
ing,  reclining,  or  musical  swains  of  what  every 
body  calls  the  "  conventional  "  sort,  —  that  is,  the 
swain  adapted  to  genteel  society  rather  than  to  a 
literal  sheep-compelling  existence. 

The  house  was  furnished,  soon  after  it  was  com 
pleted,  with  many  heavy  articles  made  in  Lon 
don  from  a  rare  wood  just  then  come  into  fash 
ion,  not  so  rare  now,  and  commonly  known  as 
mahogany.  Time  had  turned  it  very  dark,  and 
the  stately  bedsteads  and  tall  cabinets  and  claw- 
footed  chairs  and  tables  were  in  keeping  with  the 
sober  dignity  of  the  ancient  mansion.  The  old 
"  hangings  "  were  yet  preserved  in  the  chambers, 


ELSIE  VENNER.  183 

faded,  but  still  showing  their  rich  patterns, — 
properly  entitled  to  their  name,  for  they  were 
literally  hung  upon  flat  wooden  frames  like  trel 
lis-work,  which  again  were  secured  to  the  naked 
partitions. 

There  were  portraits  of  different  date  on  the 
walls  of  the  various  apartments,  old  painted 
coats-of-arrns,  bevel-edged  mirrors,  and  in  one 
sleeping-room  a  glass  case  of  wax-work  flowers 
and  spangly  symbols,  with  a  legend  signifying 
that  E.  M.  (supposed  to  be  Elizabeth  Mascarene) 
wished  not  to  be  "  forgot " 

"  When  I  am  dead  and  lay'd  in  dust 
And  all  my  bones  are" 

Poor  E.  M. !  Poor  everybody  that  sighs  for 
earthly  remembrance  in  a  planet  with  a  core  of 
fire  and  a  crust  of  fossils  ! 

Such  was  the  Dudley  mansion-house,  —  for  it 
kept  its  ancient  name  in  spite  of  the  change  in  the 
line  of  descent.  Its  spacious  apartments  looked 
dreary  and  desolate ;  for  here  Dudley  Venner 
and  his  daughter  dwelt  by  themselves,  with  such 
servants  only  as  their  quiet  mode  of  life  required. 
He  almost  lived  in  his  library,  the  western  room 
on  the  ground-floor.  Its  window  looked  upon  a 
small  plat  of  green,  in  the  midst  of  which  was  a 
single  grave  marked  by  a  plain  marble  slab.  Ex 
cept  this  room,  and  the  chamber  where  he  slept, 
and  the  servants'  wing,  the  rest  of  the  house  was 
all  Elsie's.  She  was  always  a  restless,  wandering 


184  ELSIE  VK.\XI:I:. 

child  from  her  early  years,  and  would  have  her 
little  bed  moved  from  one  chamber  to  another,  — 
flitting  round  as  the  fancy  took  her.  Sometimes 
she  would  drag  a  mat  and  a  pillow  into  one  of 
the  great  empty  rooms,  and,  wrapping  herself  in 
a  shawl,  coil  up  and  go  to  sleep  in  a  corner. 
Nothing  frightened  her  ;  the  "  haunted"  chamber, 
with  the  torn  hangings  that  flapped  like  wings 
when  there  was  air  stirring,  was  one  of  her  fa 
vorite  retreats. 

She  had  been  a  very  hard  creature  to  manage. 
Her  father  could  influence,  but  not  govern  her. 
Old  Sophy,  born  of  a  slave  mother  in  the  house, 
could  do  more  with  her  than  anybody,  knowing 
her  by  long  instinctive  study.  The  other  servants 
were  afraid  of  her.  Her  father  had  sent  for  gov 
ernesses,  but  none  of  them  ever  stayed  long.  She 
made  them  nervous ;  one  of  them  had  a  strange 
fit  of  sickness ;  not  one  of  them  ever  came  back 
to  the  house  to  see  her.  A  young  Spanish  wom 
an  who  taught  her  dancing  succeeded  best  with 
her,  for  she  had  a  passion  for  that  exercise,  and 
had  mastered  some  of  the  most  difficult  dances. 

Long  before  this  period,  she  had  manifested 
some  most  extraordinary  singularities  of  taste  or 
instinct.  The  extreme  sensitiveness  of  her  father 
on  this  point  prevented  any  allusion  to  them ;  but 
there  were  stories  floating  round,  some  of  them 
even  getting  into  the  papers,  —  without  her  name, 
of  course, — which  were  of  a  kind  to  excite  intense 
curiosity,  if  not  more  anxious  feelings.  This  thing 


ELSIE  VENNEE.  185 

was  certain,  that  at  the  age  of  twelve  she  was 
missed  one  night,  and  was  found  sleeping  in  the 
open  air  under  a  tree,  like  a  wild  creature.  Very 
often  she  would  wander  off  by  day,  always  with 
out  a  companion,  bringing  home  with  her  a  nest, 
a  flower,  or  even  a  more  questionable  trophy  of 
her  ramble,  such  as  showed  that  there  was  no 
place  where  she  was  afraid  to  venture.  Once  in 
a  while  she  had  stayed  out  over  night,  in  which 
case  the  alarm  was  spread,  and  men  went  in 
search  of  her,  but  never  successfully,  —  so  that 
some  said  she  hid  herself  in  trees,  and  others  that 
she  had  found  one  of  the  old  Tory  caves. 

Some,  of  course,  said  she  was  a  crazy  girl,  and 
ought  to  be  sent  to  an  Asylum.  But  old  Dr. 
Kittredge  had  shaken  his  head,  and  told  them  to 
bear  with  her,  and  let  her  have  her  way  as  much 
as  they  could,  but  watch  her,  as  far  as  possible, 
without  making  her  suspicious  of  them.  He  vis 
ited  her  now  and  then,  under  the  pretext  of  see 
ing  her  father  on  business,  or  of  only  making  a 
friendly  call. 

The  Doctor  fastened  his  horse  outside  the  gate, 
and  walked  up  the  garden-alley.  He  stopped 
suddenly  with  a  start.  A  strange  sound  had 
jarred  upon  his  ear.  It  was  a  sharp  prolonged 
rattle,  continuous,  but  rising  and  falling  as  if  in 
rhythmical  cadence.  He  moved  softly  towards 
the  open  window  from  which  the  sound  seemed 
to  proceed. 


186  ELSIE  TENNER. 

Elsie  was  alone  in  the  room,  dancing  one  of 
those  wild  Moorish  fandangos,  such  as  a  matador 
hot  from  the  Plaza  de  Toros  of  Seville  or  Madrid 
might  love  to  lie  and  gaze  at.  She  was  a  fig 
ure  to  look  upon  in  silence.  The  dancing  frenzy 
must  have  seized  upon  her  while  she  was  dress 
ing;  for  she  was  in  her  bodice,  bare-armed,  her 
hair  floating  unbound  far  below  the  waist  of  her 
barred  or  banded ,  skirt.  She  had  caught  up  her 
castanets,  and  rattled  them  as  she  danced  with  a 
kind  of  passionate  fierceness,  her  lithe  body  un 
dulating  with  flexuous  grace,  her  diamond  eyes 
glittering,  her  round  arms  wreathing  and  unwind 
ing,  alive  and  vibrant  to  the  tips  of  the  slender 
fingers.  Some  passion  seemed  to  exhaust  itself 
in  this  dancing  paroxysm ;  for  all  at  once  she 
reeled  from  the  middle  of  the  floor,  and  flung 
herself,  as  it  were  in  a  careless  coil,  upon  a  great 
tiger's-skin  which  was  spread  out  in  one  corner 
of  the  apartment. 

The  old  Doctor  stood  motionless,  looking  at 
her  as  she  lay  panting  on  the  tawny,  black-lined 
robe  of  the  dead  monster,  which  stretched  out 
beneath  her,  its  rude  flattened  outline  recalling 
the  Terror  of  the  Jungle  as  he  crouched  for  his 
fatal  spring.  In  a  few  moments  her  head  drooped 
upon  her  arm,  and  her  glittering  eyes  closed,  — 
she  was  sleeping.  He  stood  looking  at  her 
still,  steadily,  thoughtfully,  tenderly.  Presently 
he  lifted  his  hand  to  his  forehead,  as  if  recall 
ing  some  fading  remembrance  of  other  years. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  187 

"Poor  Catalina!" 

This  was  all  he  said.  He  shook  his  head, — 
implying  that  his  visit  would  be  in  vain  to-day, 
— returned  to  his  sulky,  and  rode  away,  as  if  in 
a  dream. 


188  ELSIE  VENNER. 


CHAPTER    XL 

COUSIN  RICHARD'S 


THE  Doctor  was  roused  from  his  reverie  by  the 
clatter  of  approaching  hoofs.  He  looked  forward 
and  saw  a  young  fellow  galloping  rapidly  towards 
him. 

A  common  New-England  rider  with  his  toes 
turned  out,  his  elbows  jerking  and  the  daylight 
showing  under  him  at  every  step,  bestriding  a 
cantering  beast  of  the1  plebeian  breed,  thick  at 
every  point  where  he  should  be  thin,  and  thin  at 
every  point  where  he  should  be  thick,  is  not  one 
of  those  noble  objects  that  bewitch  the  world. 
The  best  horsemen  outside  of  the  cities  are  the 
unshod  country-boys,  who  ride  "  bare-back,"  with 
only  a  halter  round  the  horse's  neck,  digging  their 
brown  heels  into  his  ribs,  and  slanting  over  back 
wards,  but  sticking  on  like  leeches,  and  taking  the 
hardest  trot  as  if  they  loved  it.  This  was  a  dif 
ferent  sight  on  which  the  Doctor  was  looking. 
The  streaming  mane  and  tail  of  the  unshorn, 
savage-looking,  black  horse,  the  dashing  grace 
with  which  the  young  fellow  in  the  shadowy  som 
brero,  and  armed  with  the  huge  spurs,  sat  in  his 


ELSIE  VENNER.  189 

high-peaked  saddle,  could  belong  only  to  the 
mustang  of  the  Pampas  and  his  master.  This 
bold  rider  was  a  young  man  whose  sudden  appari 
tion  in  the  quiet  inland  town  had  reminded  some 
of  the  good  people  of  a  bright,  curly-haired  boy 
they  had  known  some  eight  or  ten  years  before  as 
little  Dick  Venner. 

This  boy  had  passed  several  of  his  early  years 
at  the  Dudley  mansion,  the  playmate  of  Elsie, 
being  her  cousin,  two  or  three  years  older  than 
herself,  the  son  of  Captain  Richard  Venner,  a 
South  American  trader,  who,  as  he  changed  his 
residence  often,  was  glad  to  leave  the  boy  in  his 
brother's  charge.  The  Captain's  wife,  this  boy's 
mother,  was  a  lady  of  Buenos  Ayres,  of  Spanish 
descent,  and  had  died  while  the  child  was  in  his 
cradle.  These  two  motherless  children  were  as 
strange  a  pair  as  one  roof  could  well  cover.  Both 
handsome,  wild,  impetuous,  unmanageable,  they 
played  and  fought  together  like  two  young  leop 
ards,  beautiful,  but  dangerous,  their  lawless  in 
stincts  showing  through  all  their  graceful  move 
ments. 

The  boy  was  little  else  than  a  young  Gaucho 
when  he  first  came  to  Rockland ;  for  he  had 
learned  to  ride  almost  as  soon  as  to  walk,  and 
could  jump  on  his  pony  and  trip  up  a  runaway 
pig  with  the  bolas  or  noose  him  with  his  minia 
ture  lasso  at  an  age  when  some  city-children 
would  hardly  be  trusted  out  of  sight  of  a  nursery 
maid.  It  makes  men  imperious  to  sit  a  horse ; 


190  ELSIE  VENNER. 

no  man  governs  his  fellows  so  well  as  from  this 
living  throne.  And  so,  from  Marcus  Aurelius  in 
Roman  bronze,  down  to  the  "  man  on  horseback  " 
in  General  Cushing's  prophetic  speech,  the  saddle 
has  always  been  the  true  seat  of  empire.  The 
absolute  tyranny  of  the  human  will  over  a  noble 
and  powerful  beast  develops  the  instinct  of  per 
sonal  prevalence  and  dominion ;  so  that  horse- 
subduer  and  hero  were  almost  synonymous  in 
simpler  times,  and  are  closely  related  still.  An 
ancestry  of  wild  riders  naturally  enough  be 
queaths  also  those  other  tendencies  which  we 
see  in  the  Tartars,  the  Cossacks,  and  our  own 
Indian  Centaurs,  —  and  as  well,  perhaps,  in  the 
old-fashioned  fox-hunting  squire  as  in  any  of 
these.  Sharp  alternations  of  violent  action  and 
self-indulgent  repose ;  a  hard  run,  and  a  long 
revel  after  it :  this  is  what  over-much  horse  tends 
to  animalize  a  man  into.  Such  antecedents  may 
have  helped  to  make  little  Dick  Venner  a  self- 
willed,  capricious  boy,  and  a  rough  playmate  for 
Elsie. 

Elsie  was  the  wilder  of  the  two.  Old  Sophy, 
who  used  to  watch  them  with  those  quick,  ani 
mal-looking  eyes  of  hers, — she  was  said  to  be 
the  granddaughter  of  a  cannibal  chief,  and  in 
herited  the  keen  senses  belonging  to  all  creatures 
which  are  hunted  as  game,  —  Old  Sophy,  who 
watched  them  in  their  play  and  their  quarrels,  al 
ways  seemed  to  be  more  afraid  for  the  boy  than 
the  girl.  "  Massa  Dick !  Massa  Dick !  don'  you 


ELSIE  VENNER.  191 

be  too  rough  wi'  dat  gal !  She  scratch  you  las' 
week,  'n'  some  day  she  bite  you  ;  'n'  if  she  bite  you, 
Massa  Dick !  "  Old  Sophy  nodded  her  head  omi 
nously,  as  if  she  could  say  a  great  deal  more ; 
while,  in  grateful  acknowledgment  of  her  cau 
tion,  Master  Dick  put  his  two  little  fingers  in  the 
angles  of  his  mouth,  and  his  forefingers  on  his 
lower  eyelids,  drawing  upon  these  features  until 
his  expression  reminded  her  of  something  she 
vaguely  recollected  in  her  infancy,  —  the  face  of 
a  favorite  deity  executed  in  wood  by  an  African 
artist  for  her  grandfather,  brought  over  by  her 
mother,  and  burned  when  she  became  a  Christian. 
These  two  wild  children  had  much  in  common. 
They  loved  to  ramble  together,  to  build  huts,  to 
climb  trees  for  nests,  to  ride  the  colts,  to  dance,  to 
race,  and  to  play  at  boys'  rude  games  as  if  both 
were  boys.  JBut  wherever  two  natures  have  a 
great  deal  in  common,  the  conditions  of  a  first- 
rate  quarrel  are  furnished  ready-made.  ]  Relations  \ 
are  very  apt  to  hate  each  other  just  because  they 
are  too  much  alike.  It  is  so  frightful  to  be  in  an 
atmosphere  of  family  idiosyncrasies ;  to  see  all  the 
hereditary  uncomeliness  or  infirmity  of  body,  all 
the  defects  of  speech,  all  the  failings  of  temper, 
intensified  by  concentration,  so  that  every  fault  of 
our  own  finds  itself  multiplied  by  reflections,  like  /' 
our  images  in  a  saloon,  lined  with  mirrors !  Na 
ture  knows  what  she  is  about.  The  centrifugal 
principle  which  grows  out  of  the  antipathy  of  like\ 
to  like  is  only  the  repetition  in  character  of  the 


192  ELSIE  VEXXER. 

/arrangement  we  see  expressed-  materially  in  cer 
tain  seed-capsules,  which  burst  and  throw  the 
seed  to  all  points  of  the  compass.  A  house  is  a 
large  pod  with  a  human  germ  or  two  in  each  of 
its  cells  or  chambers ;  it  opens  by  dehiscence  of 
the  front-door  by-and-by,  and  projects  one  of  its 
germs  to  Kansas,  another  to  San  Francisco,  an 
other  to  Chicago,  and  so  on ;  and  this  that  Smith 
may  not  be  Smithed  to  death  and  Brown  may 
not  be  Browned  into  a  mad-house,  but  mix  in 
with  the  world  again  and  struggle  back  to  average 
humanity. 

Elsie's  father,  whose  fault  was  to  indulge  her  in 
everything,  found  that  it  would  never  do  to  let 
these  children  grow  up  together.  They  would 
either  love  each  other  as  they  got  older,  and  pair 
like  wild  creatures,  or  take  some  fierce  antipathy, 
which  might  end  nobody  could  tell  where.  It  was 
not  safe  to  try.  The  boy  must  be  sent  away.  A 
sharper  quarrel  than  common  decided  this  point. 
Master  Dick  forgot  Old  Sophy's  caution,  and 
vexed  the  girl  into  a  paroxysm  of  wrath,  in  which 
she  sprang  at  him  and  bit  his  arm.  Perhaps  they 
made  too  much  of  it;  for  they  sent  for  the  old 
Doctor,  who  came  at  once  when  he  heard  what 
had  happened.  He  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about 
the  danger  there  was  from  the  teeth  of  animals  or 
human  beings  when  enraged ;  and  as  he  empha 
sized  his  remarks  by  the  application  of  a  pencil 
of  lunar  caustic  to  each  of  the  marks  left  by  the 
sharp  white  teeth,  they  were  like  to  be  remem 
bered  by  at  least  one  of  his  hearers. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  193 

So  Master  Dick  went  off  on  his  travels,  which 
led  him  into  strange  places  and  stranger  company. 
Elsie  was  half  pleased  and  half  sorry  to  have  him 
go  ;  the  children  had  a  kind  of  mingled  liking 
and  hate  for  each  other,  just  such  as  is  very  com 
mon  among  relations.  Whether  the  girl  had  most 
satisfaction  in  the  plays  they  shared,  or  in  teasing 
him,  or  taking  her  small  revenge  upon  him  for 
teasing  her,  it  would  have  been  hard  to  say.  At 
any  rate,  she  was  lonely  without  him.  She  had 
more  fondness  for  the  old  black  woman  than  any 
body  ;  but  Sophy  could  not  follow  her  far  beyond 
her  own  old  rocking-chair.  As  for  her  father,  she 
had  made  him  afraid  of  her,  not  for  his  sake,  but 
for  her  own.  Sometimes  she  would  seem  to  be 
fond  of  him,  and  the  parent's  heart  would  yearn 
within  him  as  she  twined  her  supple  arms  about 
him  ;  and  then  some  look  she  gave  him,  some 
half-articulated  expression,  would  turn  his  cheek 
pale  and  almost  make  him  shiver,  and  he  would 
say  kindly,  "  Now  go,  Elsie,  dear,"  and  smile  upon 
her  as  she  went,  and  close  and  lock  the  door  softly 
after  her.  Then  his  forehead  would  knot  and  fur 
row  itself,  and  the  drops  of  anguish  stand  thick 
upon  it.  He  would  go  to  the  western  window  of 
his  study  and  look  at  the  solitary  mound  with  the 
marble  slab  for  its  head-stone.  After  his  grief 
had  had  its  way,  he  would  kneel  down  and  pray 
for  his  child  as  one  who  has  no  hope  save  in  that 
special  grace  which  can  bring  the  most  rebellious 
spirit  into  sweet  subjection.  All  this  might  seem 

VOL.  I.  13 


194  ELSIE  VENNEK. 

like  weakness  in  a  parent  having  the  charge  of 
one  sole  daughter  of  his  house  and  heart ;  but  he 
had  tried  authority  and  tenderness  by  turns  so 
long  without  any  good  effect,  that  he  had  become 
sore  perplexed,  and,  surrounding  her  with  cautious 
watchfulness  as  he  best  might,  left  her  in  the  main 
to  her  own  guidance  and  the  merciful  influences 
which  Heaven  might  send  down  to  direct  her 
footsteps. 

Meantime  the  boy  grew  up  to  youth  and  early 
manhood  through  a  strange  succession  of  adven 
tures.  He  had  been  at  school  at  Buenos  Ayres, 
—  had  quarrelled  with  his  mother's  relatives, — 
had  run  off  to  the  Pampas,  and  lived  with  the 
Gauchos,  —  had  made  friends  with  the  Indians, 
and  ridden  with  them,  it  was  rumored,  in  some 
of  their  savage  forays,  —  had  returned  and  made 
up  his  quarrel,  —  had  got  money  by  inheritance 
or  otherwise, — :had  troubled  the  peace  of  certain 
magistrates,  —  had  found  it  convenient  to  leave 
the  City  of  Wholesome  Breezes  for  a  time,  and 
had  galloped  off  on  a  fast  horse  of  his,  (so  it  was 
said),  with  some  officers  riding  after  him,  who 
took  good  care  (but  this  was  only  the  popular 
story)  not  to  catch  him.  A  few  days  after  this 
he  was  taking  his  ice  on  the  Alameda  of  Men- 
doza,  and  a  week  or  two  later  sailed  from  Val 
paraiso  for  New  York,  carrying  with  him  the 
horse  with  which  he  had  scampered  over  the 
Plains,  a  trunk  or  two  with  his  newly  purchased 
outfit  of  clothing  and  other  conveniences,  and 


ELSIE  VENNER.  195 

a  belt  heavy  with  gold  and  with  a  few  Brazilian 
diamonds  sewed  in  it,  enough  in  value  to  serve 
him  for  a  long  journey. 

Dick  Venner  had  seen  life  enough  to  wear  out 
the  earlier  sensibilities  of  adolescence.  He  was 
tired  of  worshipping  or  tyrannizing  over  the  bis- 
tred  or  umbered  beauties  of  mingled  blood  among 
whom  he  had  been  living.  Even  that  piquant 
exhibition  which  the  Rio  de  Mendoza  presents 
to  the  amateur  of  breathing  sculpture  failed  to 
interest  him.  He  was  thinking  of  a  far-off  vil 
lage  on  the  other  side  of  the  equator,  and  of  the 
wild  girl  with  whom  he  used  to  play  and  quarrel, 
a  creature  of  a  different  race  from  these  degener 
ate  mongrels. 

"  A  game  little  devil  she  was,  sure  enough ! " 
—  and  as  Dick  spoke,  he  bared  his  wrist  to  look 
for  the  marks  she  had  left  on  it :  two  small  white 
scars,  where  the  two  small  sharp  upper  teeth  had 
struck  when  she  flashed  at  him  with  her  eyes 
sparkling  as  bright  as  those  glittering  stones 
sewed  up  in  the  belt  he  wore.  —  "  That's  a  filly 
worth  noosing ! "  said  Dick  to  himself,  as  he 
looked  in  admiration  at  the  sign  of  her  spirit 
and  passion.  "  I  wonder  if  she  will  bite  at 
eighteen  as  she  did  at  eight !  She  shall  have 
a  chance  to  try,  at  any  rate ! " 

Such  was  the  self-sacrificing  disposition  with 
which  Richard  Venner,  Esq.,  a  passenger  by  the 
Condor  from  Valparaiso,  set  foot  upon  his  native 
shore,  and  turned  his  face  in  the  direction  of 


196  ELSIE  VENNER. 

Rockland,  The  Mountain  and  the  mansion- 
house.  He  had  heard  something,  from  time  to 
time,  of  his  New-England  relatives,  and  knew 
that  they  were  living  together  as  he  left  them. 
And  so  he  heralded  himself  to  "  My  dear  Uncle  " 
by  a  letter  signed  "  Your  loving  nephew,  Richard 
Venner,"  in  which  letter  he  told  a  very  frank 
story  of  travel  and  mercantile  adventure,  ex 
pressed  much  gratitude  for  the  excellent  coun 
sel  and  example  which  had  helped  to  form  his 
character  and  preserve  him  in  the  midst  of 
temptation,  inquired  affectionately  after  his  un 
cle's  health,  was  much  interested  to  know  wheth 
er  his  lively  cousin  who  used  to  be  his  playmate 
had  grown  up  as  handsome  as  she  promised  to 
be,  and  announced  his  intention  of  paying  his 
respects  to  them  both  at  Rockland.  Not  long 
after  this  came  the  trunks  marked  R.  V.  which 
he  had  sent  before  him,  forerunners  of  his  ad 
vent  :  he  was  not  going  to  wait  for  a  reply  or 
an  invitation. 

What  a  sound  that  is, — the  banging  down 
of  the  preliminary  trunk,  without  its  claimant 
to  give  it  the  life  which  is  borrowed  by  all  per 
sonal  appendages,  so  long  as  the  owner's  hand 
or  eye  is  on  them !  If  it  announce  the  coming 
of  one  loved  and  longed  for,  how  we  delight  to 
look  at  it,  to  sit  down  on  it,  to  caress  it  in  our 
fancies,  as  a  lone  exile  walking  out  on  a  windy 
pier  yearns  towards  the  merchantman  lying  along 
side,  with  the  colors  of  his  own  native  land  at  her 


ELSIE  VENNEK.  197 

peak,  and  the  name  of  the  port  he  sailed  from 
long  ago  upon  her  stern  !     But  if  it  tell  the  near 
approach  of  the  undesired,  inevitable  guest,  what 
sound  short  of  the  muffled  noises  made  by  the    / 
undertakers  as  they  turn  the  corners  in  the  dim-   j 
lighted  house,  with  low  shuffle  of  feet  and  whis-  [ 
pered  cautions,  carries  such  a  sense  of  knocking-  \ 
kneed   collapse  with   it   as   the  thumping  down  / 
in   the   front   entry   of  the   heavy   portmanteau,  i 
rammed  with  the  changes  of  uncounted  coming' 
weeks  ? 

Whether  the  R.  V.  portmanteaus  brought  one 
or  the  other  of  these  emotions  to  the  tenants  of 
the  Dudley  mansion,  it  might  not  be  easy  to 
settle.  Elsie  professed  to  be  pleased  with  the 
thought  of  having  an  adventurous  young  stran 
ger,  with  stories  to  tell,  an  inmate  of  their  quiet, 
not  to  say  dull,  family.  Under  almost  any  other 
circumstances,  her  father  would  have  been  un 
willing  to  take  a  young  fellow  of  whom  he  knew 
so  little  under  his  roof ;  but  this  was  his  nephew, 
and  anything  that  seemed  like  to  amuse  or  please 
Elsie  was  agreeable  to  him.  He  had  grown  al 
most  desperate,  and  felt  as  if  any  change  in  the 
current  of  her  life  and  feelings  might  save  her 
from  some  strange  paroxysm  of  dangerous  men 
tal  exaltation  or  sullen  perversion  of  disposition, 
from  which  some  fearful  calamity  might  come 
to  herself  or  others. 

.  Dick  had  been  several  weeks  at  the  Dudley 
mansion.     A  few  days  before,  he  had   made  a 


198  ELSIE  VENNER. 

sudden  dash  for  the  nearest  large  city,  —  and 
when  the  Doctor  met  him,  he  was  just  return 
ing  from  his  visit. 

It  had  been  a  curious  meeting  between  the 
two  young  persons,  who  had  parted  so  young 
and  after  such  strange  relations  with  each  other. 
When  Dick  first  presented  himself  at  the  man 
sion,  not  one  in  the  house  would  have  known 
him  for  the  boy  who  had  left  them  all  so  sud 
denly  years  ago.  He  was  so  dark,  partly  from 
his  descent,  partly  from  long  habits  of  exposure, 
that  Elsie  looked  almost  fair  beside  him.  He 
had  something  of  the  family  beauty  which  be 
longed  to  his  cousin,  but  his  eye  had  a  fierce 
passion  in  it,  very  unlike  the  cold  glitter  of 
Elsie's,  j  Like  many  people  of  strong  and  im 
perious  temper,  he  was  soft-voiced  and  very 
gentle  in  his  address,  when  he  had  no  special 
reason  for  being  otherwise.  \  He  soon  found  rea 
sons  enough  to  be  as  amiable  as  he  could  force 
himself  to  be  with  his  uncle  and  his  cousin. 
Elsie  was  to  his  fancy.  She  had  a  strange  at 
traction  for  him,  quite  unlike  anything  he  had 
ever  known  in  other  women.  There  was  some 
thing,  too,  in  early  associations  :  when  those  who 
parted  as  children  meet  as  man  and  woman,  there 
is  always  a  renewal  of  that  early  experience 
which  followed  the  taste  of  the  forbidden  fruit, 
—  a  natural  blush  of  consciousness,  not  without 
its  charm. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  199 

Nothing  could  be  more  becoming  than  the  be 
havior  of  "  Richard  Venner,  Esquire,  the  guest  of 
Dudley  Venner,  Esquire,  at  his  noble  mansion," 
as  he  was  announced  in  the  Court  column  of  the 
"  Rockland  Weekly  Universe."  He  was  pleased 
to  find  himself  treated  with  kindness  and  atten 
tion  as  a  relative.  He  made  himself  very  agreea 
ble  by  abundant  details  concerning  the  religious, 
political,  social,  commercial,  and  educational 
progress  of  the  South  American  •  cities  and 
states.  He  was  himself  much  interested  in 
everything  that  was  going  on  about  the  Dudley 
mansion,  walked  all  over  it,  noticed  its  valuable 
wood-lots  with  special  approbation,  was  delighted 
with  the  grand  old  house  and  its  furniture,  and 
would  not  be  easy  until  he  had  seen  all  the 
family  silver  and  heard  its  history.  In  return, 
he  had  much  to  tell  of  his  father,  now  dead,  — 
the  only  one  of  the  Venners,  beside  themselves, 
in  whose  fate  his  uncle  was  interested.  With 
Elsie,  he  was  subdued  and  almost  tender  in  his 
manner ;  with  the  few  visitors  whom  they  saw, 
shy  and  silent,  —  perhaps  a  little  watchful,  if  any 
young  man  happened  to  be  among  them. 

Young  fellows  placed  on  their  good  behavior 
are  apt  to  get  restless  and  nervous,  all  ready 
to  fly  off  into  some  mischief  or  other.  Dick 
Venner  had  his  half-tamed  horse  with  him  to 
work  off  his  suppressed  life  with.  When  the 
savage  passion  of  his  young  blood  came  over 
him,  he  would  fetch  out  the  mustang,  screaming 


200  ELSIE  VENNER. 

and  kicking  as  these  amiable  beasts  are  wont  to 
do,  strap  the  Spanish  saddle  tight  to  his  back, 
vault  into  it,  and,  after  getting  away  from  the 
village,  strike  the  long  spurs  into  his  sides  and 
whirl  away  in  a  wild  gallop,  until  the  black  horse 
was  flecked  with  white  foam,  and  the  cruel  steel 
points  were  red  with  his  blood.  When  horse 
and  rider  were  alike  tired,  he  would  fling  the 
bridle  on  his  neck  and  saunter  homeward,  al 
ways  contriving  to  get  to  the  stable  in  a  quiet 
way,  and  coming  into  the  house  as  calm  as 
a  bishop  after  a  sober  trot  on  his  steady-going 
cob. 

After  a  few  weeks  of  this  kind  of  life,  he  began 
to  want  some  more  fierce  excitement.  He  had 
tried  making  downright  love  to  Elsie,  with  no 
great  success  as  yet,  in  his  own  opinion.  The 
girl  was  capricious  in  her  treatment  of  him,  some 
times  scowling  and  repellent,  sometimes  familiar, 
very  often,  as  she  used  to  be  of  old,  teasing  and 
malicious.  All  this,  perhaps,  made  her  more  in 
teresting  to  a  young  man  who  was  tired  of  easy 
conquests.  There  was  a  strange  fascination  in 
her  eyes,  too,  which  at  times  was  quite  irresisti 
ble,  so  that  he  would  feel  himself  drawn  to  her 
by  a  power  which  seemed  to  take  away  his  will 
for  the  moment.  It  may  have  been  nothing  but 
the  common  charm  of  bright  eyes ;  but  he  had 
never  before  experienced  the  same  kind  of  at 
traction. 

Perhaps    she  was    not   so  very  different   from 


ELSIE  VENNER.  201 

what  she  had  been  as  a  child,  after  all.  At  any 
rate,  so  it  seemed  to  Dick  Venner,  who,  as  was 
said  before,  had  tried  making  love  to  her.  They 
were  sitting  alone  in  the  study  one  day ;  Elsie 
had  round  her  neck  that  somewhat  peculiar  orna 
ment,  the  golden  torque,  which  she  had  worn  to 
the  great  party.  Youth  is  adventurous  and  very 
curious  about  necklaces,  brooches,  chains,  and 
other  such  adornments,  so  long  as  they  are  worn 
by  young  persons  of  the  female  sex.  Dick  was 
seized  with  a  great  passion  for  examining  this 
curious  chain,  and,  after  some  preliminary  ques 
tions,  was  rash  enough  to  lean  towards  her  and 
put  out  his  hand  toward  the  neck  that  lay  in  the 
golden  coil.  She  threw  her  head  back,  her  eyes 
narrowing  and  her  forehead  drawing  down  so 
that  Dick  thought  her  head  actually  flattened 
itself.  He  started  involuntarily ;  for  she  looked 
so  like  the  little  girl  who  had  struck  him  with 
those  sharp  flashing  teeth,  that  the  whole  scene 
came  back,  and  he  felt  the  stroke  again  as  if  it 
had  just  been  given,  and  the  two  white  scars 
began  to  sting  as  they  did  after  the  old  Doctor 
had  burned  them  with  that  stick  of  gray  caustic, 
which  looked  so  like  a  slate  pencil,  and  felt  so 
much  like  the  end  of  a  red-hot  poker. 

It  took  something  more  than  a  gallop  to  set 
him  right  after  this.  The  next  day  he  mentioned 
having  received  a  letter  from  a  mercantile  agent 
with  whom  he  had  dealings.  What  his  busi 
ness  was  is,  perhaps,  none  of  our  business.  At 


202  ELSIE  VENNER. 

any  rate,  it  required  him  to  go  at  once  to  the 
city  where  his  correspondent  resided. 

Independently  of  this  "  business  "  which  called 
him,  there  may  have  been  other  motives,  such  as 
have  been  hinted  at.  People  who  have  been 
living  for  a  long  time  in  dreary  country-places, 
without  any  emotion  beyond  such  as  are  occa 
sioned  by  a  trivial  pleasure  or  annoyance,  often 
get  crazy  at  last  for  a  vital  paroxysm  of  some 
kind  or  other.  In  this  state  they  rush  to  the 
great  cities  for  a  plunge  into  their  turbid  life- 
baths,  with  a  frantic  thirst  for  every  exciting 
pleasure,  which  makes  them  the  willing  arid  easy 
victims  of  all  those  who  sell  the  Devil's  wares 
on  commission.  The  less  intelligent  and  in 
structed  class  of  unfortunates,  who  venture  with 
their  ignorance  and  their  instincts  into  what  is 
sometimes  called  the  "  life  "  of  great  cities,  are 
put  through  a  rapid  course  of  instruction  which 
entitles  them  very  commonly  to  a  diploma  from 
the  police  court.  But  they  only  illustrate  the 
working  of  the  same  tendency  in  mankind  at 
large  which  has  been  occasionally  noticed  in  the 
sons  of  ministers  and  other  eminently  worthy 
people,  by  many  ascribed  to  that  intense  con 
genital  hatred  for  goodness  which  distinguishes 
human  nature  from  that  of  the  brute,  but  per 
haps  as  readily  accounted  for  by  considering  it 
as  the  yawning  and  stretching  of  a  young  soul 
cramped  too  long  in  one  moral  posture. 

Richard  Venner  was  a  young  man  of  remark- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  203 

able  experience  for  his  years.  He  ran  less  risk, 
therefore,  in  exposing  himself  to  the  temptations 
and  dangers  of  a  great  city  than  many  older  men, 
who,  seeking  the  livelier  scenes  of  excitement  to 
be  found  in  large  towns  as  a  relaxation  after  the 
monotonous  routine  of  family-life,  are  too  often 
taken  advantage  of  and  made  the  victims  of  their 
sentiments  or  their  generous  confidence  in  their 
fellow-creatures.  Such  was  not  his  destiny.  There 
was  something  about  him  which  looked  as  if  he 
would  not  take  bullying  kindly.  He  had  also 
the  advantage  of  being  acquainted  with  most  of 
those  ingenious  devices  by  which  the  proverbial 
inconstancy  of  fortune  is  steadied  to  something 
more  nearly  approaching  fixed  laws,  and  the  dan 
gerous  risks  which  have  so  often  led  young  men 
to  ruin  and  suicide  are  practically  reduced  to 
somewhat  less  than  nothing.  So  that  Mr.  Rich 
ard  Venner  worked  off  his  nervous  energies  with 
out  any  troublesome  adventure,  and  was  ready 
to  return  to  Rockland  in  less  than  a  week,  with 
out  having  lightened  the  money-belt  he  wore 
round  his  body,  or  tarnished  the  long  glittering 
knife  he  carried  in  his  boot. 

Dick  had  sent  his  trunk  to  the  nearest  town 
through  which  the  railroad  leading  to  the  city 
passed.  He  rode  off  on  his  black  horse  and  left 
him  at  the  place  where  he  took  the  cars.  On  ar 
riving  at  the  city  station,  he  took  a  coach  and 
drove  to  one  of  the  great  hotels.  Thither  drove 
also  a  sagacious-looking,  middle-aged  man,  who 


204  ELSIE  VENNER. 

entered  his  name  as  "W.  Thompson"  in  the  book 
at  the  office  immediately  after  that  of  "  R.  Ven- 
ner."  Mr.  "  Thompson "  kept  a  carelessly  ob 
servant  eye  upon  Mr.  Venner  during  his  stay  at 
the  hotel,  and  followed  him  to  the  cars  when  he 
left,  looking  over  his  shoulder  when  he  bought 
his  ticket  at  the  station,  and  seeing  him  fairly 
off  without  obtruding  himself  in  any  offensive 
way  upon  his  attention.  Mr.  Thompson,  known 
in  other  quarters  as  Detective  Policeman  Terry, 
got  very  little  by  his  trouble.  Richard  Venner 
did  not  turn  out  to  be  the  wife-poisoner,  the 
defaulting  cashier,  the  river-pirate,  or  the  great 
counterfeiter.  He  paid  his  hotel-bill  as  a  gentle 
man  should  always  do,  if  he  has  the  money, 
and  can  spare  it.  The  detective  had  probably 
overrated  his  own  sagacity  when  he  ventured  to 
suspect  Mr.  Venner.  He  reported  to  his  chief 
that  there  was  a  knowing-looking  fellow  he  had 
been  round  after,  but  he  rather  guessed  he  was 
nothing  more  than  "  one  o'  them  Southern  sports 
men." 

The  poor  fellows  at  the  stable  where  Dick 
had  left  his  horse  had  had  trouble  enough  with 
him.  One  of  the  ostlers  was  limping  about  with 
a  lame  leg,  and  another  had  lost  a  mouthful  of 
his  coat,  which  came  very  near  carrying  a  piece 
of  his  shoulder  with  it.  When  Mr.  Venner  came 
back  for  his  beast,  he  was  as  wild  as  if  he  had 
just  been  lassoed,  screaming,  kicking,  rolling 
over  to  get  rid  of  his  saddle,  —  and  when  his 


ELSIE  VENNER.  205 

rider  was  at  last  mounted,  jumping  about  in  a 
way  to  dislodge  any  common  horseman.  To 
all  this  Dick  replied  by  sticking  his  long  spurs 
deeper  and  deeper  into  his  flanks,  until  the  crea 
ture  found  he  was  mastered,  and  dashed  off  as 
if  all  the  thistles  of  the  Pampas  were  pricking 
him. 

"  One  more  gallop,  Juan !  "  This  was  in  the 
last  mile  of  the  road  before  he  came  to  the  town 
which  brought  him  in  sight  of  the  mansion-house. 
It  was  in  this  last  gallop  that  the  fiery  mustang 
and  his  rider  flashed  by  the  old  Doctor.  Cassia 
pointed  her  sharp  ears  and  shied  to  let  them 
pass.  The  Doctor  turned  and  looked  through 
the  little  round  glass  in  the  back  of  his  sulky. 

"  Dick  Turpin,  there,  will  find  more  than  his 
match!"  said  the  Doctor. 


206  ELSIE  VENNER. 


CHAPTEE  XII. 

THE   APOLLI5TEAN   INSTITUTE. 
(With  Extracts  from  the  "Report  of  the  Committee.") 

THE  readers  of  this  narrative  will  hardly  ex 
pect  any  elaborate  details  of  the  educational 
management  of  the  Apollinean  Institute.  They 
cannot  be  supposed  to  take  the  same  interest  in 
its  affairs  as  was  shown  by  the  Annual  Commit 
tees  who  reported  upon  its  condition  and  pros 
pects.  As  these  Committees  were,  however,  an 
important  part  of  the  mechanism  of  the  estab 
lishment,  some  general  account  of  their  organi 
zation  and  a  few  extracts  from  the  Report  of  the 
one  last  appointed  may  not  be  out  of  place. 

Whether  Mr.  Silas  Peckham  had  some  contriv 
ance  for  packing  his  Committees,  whether  they 
happened  always  to  be  made  up  of  optimists  by 
nature,  whether  they  were  cajoled  into  good-hu 
mor  by  polite  attentions,  or  whether  they  were 
always  really  delighted  with  the  wonderful  ac 
quirements  of  the  pupils  and  the  admirable  order 
of  the  school,  it  is  certain  that  their  Annual  Re- 


ELSIE  VENNEE.  207 

ports  were  couched  in  language  which  might 
warm  the  heart  of  the  most  cold-b] coded  and  cal 
culating  father  that  ever  had  a  family  of  daugh 
ters  to  educate.  In  fact,  these  Annual  Reports 
were  considered  by  Mr.  Peckham  as  his  most 
effective  advertisements. 

The  first  thing,  therefore,  was  to  see  that  the 
Committee  was  made  up  of  persons  known  to 
the   public.    -Some  worn-out   politician,  in  that 
leisurely  and  amiable  transition-state  which  comes 
between  official  extinction  and  the  paralysis  which 
will  finish  him  as  soon  as  his  brain  gets  a  little 
softer,  made  an  admirable  Chairman  for  Mr.  Peck- 
ham,  when  he  had  the  luck  to  pick  up  such  an 
article.  /  Old   reputations,  like  old   fashions,  are 
more  prized  in  the  grassy  than  in  the  stony  dis 
tricts.     An  effete  celebrity,  who  would  never  be 
heard  of  again  in  the  great  places  until  the  fu 
neral  sermon  waked  up  his  memory  for  one  part 
ing  spasm,  finds  himself  in  full  flavor  of  renown 
a  little  farther  back  from  the  changing  winds  of 
the  sea-coast.  \  If  such  a  public  character  was  not 
to  be  had,  so  that  there  was  no  chance  of  heading 
the  Report  with  the  name  of  the  Honorable  Mr. 
Somebody,  the  next  best  thing  was  to  get  the 
Reverend  Dr.  Somebody  to  take  that  conspicu 
ous  position.     Then  would  follow  two  or  three 
local  worthies   with    Esquire   after   their  names. 
If  any  stray  literary  personage  from  one  of  the 
great  cities  happened  to  be  within  reach,  he  was 
pounced  upon  by  Mr.  Silas  Peckham.     It  was  a 


208  ELSIE  VENNER. 

hard  case  for  the  poor  man,  who  had  travelled  a 
hundred  miles  or  two  to  the  outside  suburbs  after 
peace  and  un watered  milk,  to  be  pumped  for  a 
speech  in  this  unexpected  way.  It  was  harder 
still,  if  he  had  been  induced  to  venture  a  few 
tremulous  remarks,  to  be  obliged  to  write  them 
out  for  the  "  Rockland  Weekly  Universe,"  with 
the  chance  of  seeing  them  used  as  an  advertising 
certificate  as  long  as  he  lived,  if  he  lived  as  long 
as  the  late  Dr.  Waterhouse  did  after  giving  his 
certificate  in  favor  of  Whitwell's  celebrated  Ce 
phalic  Snuff. 

The   Report  of  the  last  Committee  had  been 

signed  by  the  Honorable  ,  late of 

,  as  Chairman.     (It  is  with  reluctance  that 

the  name  and  titles  are  left  in  blank ;  but  our  pub 
lic  characters  are  so  familiarly  known  to  the  whole 
community  that  this  reserve  becomes  necessary.) 
The  other  members  of  the  Committee  were  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Butters,  of  a  neighboring  town, 
who  was  to  make  the  prayer  before  the  Exercises 
of  the  Exhibition,  and  two  or  three  notabilities 
of  Rockland,  with  geoponic  eyes,  and  glabrous, 
bumpless  foreheads.  A  few  extracts  from  the 
Report  are  subjoined :  — 

"  The  Committee  have  great  pleasure  in  record 
ing  their  unanimous  opinion,  that  the  Institution 
was  never  in  so  flourishing  a  condition.  .  .  . 

"  The  health  of  the  pupils  is  excellent ;  the  ad 
mirable  quality  of  food  supplied  shows  itself  in 


ELSIE  VENNER.  209 

their  appearance  ;  their  blooming  aspect  excited 
the  admiration  of  the  Committee,  and  bears  tes 
timony  to  the  assiduity  of  the  excellent  Matron. 

" moral  and  religious  condition  most 

encouraging,  which  they  cannot  but  attribute  to 
the  personal  efforts  and  instruction  of  the  faithful 
Principal,  who  considers  religious  instruction  a 
solemn  duty  which  he  cannot  commit  to  other 
people. 

" great  progress  in  their  studies,  un 
der  the  intelligent  superintendence  of  the  accom 
plished  Principal,  assisted  by  Mr.  Badger,  [Mr. 
Langdon's  predecessor,]  Miss  Darley,  the  lady 
who  superintends  the  English  branches,  Miss 
Crabs,  her  assistant  and  teacher  of  Modern  Lan 
guages,  and  Mr.  Schneider,  teacher  of  French, 
German,  Latin,  and  Music 

"  Education  is  the  great  business  of  the  Insti 
tute.  Amusements  are  objects  of  a  secondary 
nature ;  but  these  are  by  no  means  neglected.  .  .  . 

" English  compositions  of  great 

originality  and  beauty,  creditable  alike  to  the 
head  and  heart  of  their  accomplished  authors. 

several  poems  of  a  very,  high  order  of 

merit,  which  would  do  honor  to  the  literature 

of  any  age  or  country life-like  drawings, 

showing  great  proficiency.  .  .  .  Many  converse 
fluently  in  various  modern  languages per 
form  the  most  difficult  airs  with  the  skill  of  pro 
fessional  musicians 

" advantages  unsurpassed,  if  equalled, 

VOL.    I.  14 


210  ELSIE  VENNER. 

by  those  of  any  Institution  in  the  country,  and 
reflecting  the  highest  honor  on  the  distinguished 
Head  of  the  Establishment,  SILAS  PECKHAM,  Es 
quire,  and  his  admirable  Lady,  the  MATRON,  with 
their  worthy  assistants " 

The  perusal  of  this  Report  did  Mr.  Bernard 
more  good  than  a  week's  vacation  would  have 
done.  It  gave  him  such  a  laugh  as  he  had  not 
had  for  a  month.  The  way  in  which  Silas  Peck- 
ham  had  made  his  Committee  say  what  he  wanted 
them  to  —  for  he  recognized  a  number  of  expres 
sions  in  the  Report  as  coming  directly  from  the 
lips  of  his  principal,  and  could  not  help  thinking 
how  cleverly  he  had  forced  his  phrases,  as  jug 
glers  do  the  particular  card  they  wish  their  dupe 
to  take  —  struck  him  as  particularly  neat  and 
pleasing. 

He  had  passed  through  the  sympathetic  and 
emotional  stages  in  his  new  experience,  and  had 
arrived  at  the  philosophical  and  practical  state, 
which  takes  things  coolly,  and  goes  to  work  to 
set  them  right.  He  had  breadth  enough  of  view 
to  see  that  there  was  nothing  so  very  excep 
tional  in  this  educational  trader's  dealings  with 
his  subordinates,  but  he  had  also  manly  feeling 
enough  to  attack  the  particular  individual  in 
stance  of  wrong  before  him.  There  are  plenty 
of  dealers  in  morals,  as  in  ordinary  traffic,  who 
confine  themselves  to  wholesale  business.  They 
leave  the  small  necessity  of  their  next-door  neigh- 


ELSIE  VENNEK.  211 

bor  to  the  retailers,  who  are  poorer  in  statistics 
and  general  facts,  but  richer  in  the  every-day  char 
ities.  Mr.  Bernard  felt,  at  first,  as  one  does  who 
sees  a  gray  rat  steal  out  of  a  drain  and  begin 
gnawing  at  the  bark  of  some  tree  loaded  with 
fruit  or  blossoms,  which  he  will  soon  girdle,  if  he 
is  let  alone.  The  first  impulse  is  to  murder  him 
with  the  nearest  ragged  stone.  Then  one  re 
members  that  he  is  a  rodent,  acting  after  the  law 
of  his  kind,  and  cools  down  and  is  contented  to 
drive  him  off  and  guard  the  tree  against  his  teeth 
for  the  future.  As  soon  as  this  is  done,  one  can 
watch  his  attempts  at  mischief  with  a  certain 
amusement. 

This  was  the  kind  of  process  Mr.  Bernard  had 
gone  through.  First,  the  indignant  surprise  of  a 
generous  nature,  when  it  comes  unexpectedly  into 
relations  with  a  mean  one.  Then  the  impulse  of 
extermination,  —  a  divine  instinct,  intended  to 
keep  down  vermin  of  all  classes  to  their  working 
averages  in  the  economy  of  Nature.  Then  a  re 
turn  of  cheerful  tolerance,  —  a  feeling,  that,  if  the 
Deity  could  bear  with  rats  and  sharpers,  he  could ; 
with  a  confident  trust,  that,  in  the  long  run,  ter 
riers  and  honest  men  would  have  the  upperhand, 
and  a  grateful  consciousness  that  he  had  been 
sent  just  at  the  right  time  to  come  between  a 
patient  victim  and  the  master  who  held  her  in 
peonage. 

Having  once  made  up  his  mind  what  to  do, 
Mr.  Bernard  was  as  good-natured  and  hopeful  as 


212  ELSIE  VENNER. 

ever.     He  had  the  great  advantage,  from  his  pro 
fessional  training,  of  knowing  how  to  recognize 
and  deal  with  the  nervous  disturbances  to  which 
overtasked  women  are   so  liable.     He  saw  well 
enough  that  Helen  Darley  would  certainly  kill 
herself  or  lose  her  wits,  if  he  could  not  lighten 
her  labors  and  lift  off  a  large  part  of  her  weight 
of  cares.     The  worst  of  it  was,  that  she  was  one 
V  of  those  women  who  naturally  overwork  them- 
/  selves,  like  those  horses  who  will  go  at  the  top 
of  their  pace  until  they  drop.     Such  women  are 
\   dreadfully  unmanageable.    It  is  as  hard  reasoning 
I  with  them  as  it  would  have  been  reasoning  with 
/    lo,  when  she  was  flying  over  land  and  sea,  driven 
by  the  sting  of  the  never-sleeping  gadfly. 

This  was  a  delicate,  interesting  game  that  he 
1  played.  Under  one  innocent  pretext  or  another, 
he  invaded  this  or  that  special  province  she  had 
made  her  own.  He  would  collect  the  themes 
and  have  them  all  read  and  marked,  answer  all 
the  puzzling  questions  in  mathematics,  make  the 
other  teachers  come  to  him  for  directions,  and  in 
this  way  gradually  took  upon  himself  not  only  ah1 
the  general  superintendence  that  belonged  to  his 
office,  but  stole  away  so  many  of  the  special 
duties  which  might  fairly  have  belonged  to  his 
assistant,  that,  before  she  knew  it,  she  was  look 
ing  better  and  feeling  more  cheerful  than  for  many 
rd  many  a  month  before. 
When  the  nervous  energy  is  depressed  by  any 
/bodily  cause,  or  exhausted  by  overworking,  there 


ELSIE  VENDER.  213 

follow  effects  which  have  often  been  misinterpret 
ed  by  moralists,  and  especially  by  theologians. 
The  conscience  itself  becomes  neuralgic,  some 
times  actually  inflamed,  so  that  the  least  touch  is 
agony.  Of  all  liars  and  false  accusers,  a  sick 
conscience  is  the  most  inventive  and  indefatiga 
ble.  The  devoted  daughter,  wife,  mother,  whose 
life  has  been  given  to  unselfish  labors,  who  has 
filled  a  place  which  it  seems  to  others  only  an 
angel  would  make  good,  reproaches  herself  with 
incompetence  and  neglect  of  duty.  The  humble 
Christian,  who  has  been  a  model  to  others,  calls 
himself  a  worm  of  the  dust  on  one  page  of  his 
diary,  and  arraigns  himself  on  the  next  for  com 
ing  short  of  the  perfection  of  an  archangel. 
I  Conscience  itself  requires  a  conscience,  or  noth 
ing  can  be  more  unscrupulous.  /It  told  Saul  that 
he  did  well  in  persecuting  the  Christians.  It  has 
goaded  countless  multitudes  of  various  creeds  to 
endless  forms  of  self-torture.  The  cities  of  India 
are  full  of  cripples  it  has  made.  The  hill-sides 
of  Syria  are  riddled  with  holes,  where  miserable 
hermits,  whose  lives  it  had  palsied,  lived  and  died 
like  the  vermin  they  harbored.  /Our  libraries  are 
crammed  with  books  written  by  spiritual  hypo 
chondriacs,  who  inspected  all  their  moral  secretions 
a  dozen  times  a  day.  They  are  full  of  interest, 
but  they  should  be  transferred  from  the  shelf  of 
the  theologian  to  that  of  the  medical  man  who 
makes-  a  study  of  insanity.  \ 

This  was  the  state  into  which  too  much  work 


214  ELSIE  VENNER. 

and  too  much  responsibility  were  bringing  Helen 
Darley,  when  the  new  master  came  and  lifted  so 
much  of  the  burden  that  was  crushing  her  as 
must  be  removed  before  she  could  have  a  chance 
to  recover  her  natural  elasticity  and  buoyancy. 
Many  of  the  noblest  women,  suffering  like  her, 
but  less  fortunate  in  being  relieved  at  the  right 
moment,  die  worried  out  of  life  by  the  perpetual 
teasing  of  this  inflamed,  neuralgic  conscience. 
So  subtile  is  the  line  which  separates  the  true 
and  almost  angelic  sensibility  of  a  healthy,  but 
exalted  nature,  from  the  soreness  of  a  soul  which 
is  sympathizing  with  a  morbid  state  of  the  body, 
that  it  is  no  wonder  they  are  often  confounded. 
And  thus  many  good  women  are  suffered  to  per 
ish  by  that  form  of  spontaneous  combustion  in 
which  the  victim  goes  on  toiling  day  and  night 
with  the  hidden  fire  consuming  her,  until  all  at 
once,  her  cheek  whitens,  and,  as  we  look  upon  her, 
she  drops  away,  a  heap  of  ashes.  The  more  they 
overwork  themselves,  the  more  exacting  becomes 
the  sense  of  duty,  —  as  the  draught  of  the  loco 
motive's  furnace  blows  stronger  and  makes  the 
fire  burn  more  fiercely,  the  faster  it  spins  along 
the  track. 

It  is  not  very  likely,  as  was  said  at  the  begin 
ning  of  this  chapter,  that  we  shall  trouble  our 
selves  a  great  dea]  about  the  internal  affairs  of 
the  Apollinean  Institute.  These  schools  are,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  not  so  very  unlike  each  other 
as  to  require  a  minute  description  for  each  partic- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  215 

ular  one  among  them.  They  have  all  very  much 
the  same  general  features,  pleasing  and  displeas 
ing.  All  feeding-establishments  have  something 
odious  about  them,  —  from  the  wretched  country- 
houses  where  paupers  are  farmed  out  to  the  low 
est  bidder,  up  to  the  commons-tables  at  colleges, 
and  even  the  fashionable  boarding-house.  A  per 
son's  appetite  should  be  at  war  with  no  other 
purse  than  his  own.  Young  people,  especially, 
who  have  a  bone-factory  at  work  in  them,  and 
have  to  feed  the  living  looms  of  innumerable 
growing  tissues,  should  be  provided  for,  if  possi 
ble,  by  those  who  love  4hem  like  their  own  flesh 
and  blood.  Elsewhere  their  appetites  will  be  sure 
to  make  them  enemies,  or,  what  are  almost  as 
bad,  friends  whose  interests  are  at  variance  with 
the  claims  of  their  exacting  necessities  and  de 
mands. 

Besides,  all  commercial  transactions  in  regard 
to  the  most  sacred  interests  of  life  are  hateful 
even  to  those  who  profit  by  them.  The  clergy 
man,  the  physician,  the  teacher,  must  be  paid ; 
but  each  of  them,  if  his  duty  be  performed  in 
the  true  spirit,  can  hardly  help  a  shiver  of  disgust 
when  money  is  counted  out  to  him  for  adminis 
tering  the  consolations  of  religion,  for  saving  some 
precious  life,  for  sowing  the  seeds  of  Christian 
civilization  in  young,  ingenuous  souls. 

And  yet  all  these  schools,  with  their  provincial 
French  and  their  mechanical  accomplishments, 
with  their  cheap  parade  of  diplomas  and  com- 


216  ELSIE  VENNER. 

mencements  and  other  public  honors,  have  an 
ever  fresh  interest  to  all  who  see  the  task  they  are 
performing  in  our  new  social  order.  These  girls 
are  not  being  educated  for  governesses,  or  to  be 
exported,  with  other  manufactured  articles,  to 
colonies  where  there  happens  to  be  a  surplus  of 
males.  Most  of  them  will  be  wives,  and  every 
American-born  husband  is  a  possible  President 
of  these  United  States.  Any  one  of  these  girls 
may  be  a  four-years'  queen.  There  is  no  sphere 
of  human  activity  so  exalted  that  she  may  not 
be  called  upon  to  fill  it. 

But  there  is  another  consideration  of  far  higher 
interest.  The  education  of  our  community  to  all 
that  is  beautiful  is  flowing  in  mainly  through  its 
women,  and  that  to  a  considerable  extent  by  the 
aid  of  these  large  establishments,  the  least  perfect 
of  which  do  something  to  stimulate  the  higher 
tastes  and  partially  instruct  them.  Sometimes 
there  is,  perhaps,  reason  to  fear  that  girls  will  be 
too  highly  educated  for  their  own  happiness,  if 
they  are  lifted  by  their  culture  out  of  the  range  of 
the  practical  and  every-day  working  youth  by 
whom  they  are  surrounded.  But  this  is  a  risk  we 
must  take.  /Our  young  men  come  into  active  life 
so  early,  that,  if  our  girls  were  not  educated  to 
something  beyond  mere  practical  duties,  our  ma 
terial  prosperity  would  outstrip  our  culture  j  as 
it  often  does  in  large  places  where  money  is  made 
too  rapidly.  This  is  the  meaning,  therefore,  of 
that  somewhat  ambitious  programme  common 


ELSIE  VENNER.  217 

to  most  of  these  large  institutions,  at  which  we 
sometimes  smile,  perhaps  unwisely  or  uncharita 
bly. 

We  shall  take  it  for  granted  that  the  routine  of 
instruction  went  on  at  the  Apollinean  Institute 
much  as  it  does  in  other  schools  of  the  same  class. 
People,  young  or  old,  are  wonderfully  different,  if 
we  contrast  extremes  in  pairs.  They  approach 
much  nearer,  if  we  take  them  in  groups  of  twenty. 
Take  two  separate  hundreds  as  they  come,  with 
out  choosing,  and  you  get  the  gamut  of  human 
character  in  both  so  completely  that  you  can 
strike  many  chords  in  each  which  shall  be  in  per 
fect  unison  with  corresponding  ones  in  the  other. 
If  we  go  a  step  farther,  and  compare  the  popula 
tion  of  two  villages  of  the  same  race  and  region, 
there  is  such  a  regularly  graduated  distribution 
and  parallelism  of  character,  that  it  seems  as  if 
Nature  must  turn  out  human  beings  in  sets  like 
chessmen. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  the  position  in' which 
Mr.  Bernard  now  found  himself  had  a  pleasing 
danger  about  it  which  might  well  justify  all  the 
fears  entertained  on  his  account  by  more  experi 
enced  friends,  when  they  learned  that  he  was 
engaged  in  a  Young  Ladies'  Seminary.  The 
school  never  went  on  more  smoothly  than  during 
the  first  period  of  his  administration,  after  he  had 
arranged  its  duties,  and  taken  his  share,  and  even 
more  than  his  share,  upon  himself.  But  human 
nature  does  not  wait  for  the  diploma  of  the  Apol- 


218  ELSIE  TENNER. 

linean  Institute  to  claim  the  exercise  of  its  in 
stincts  and  faculties.  These  young  girls  saw  but 
little  of  the  youth  of  the  neighborhood.  The 
mansion-house  young  men  were  off  at  college  or 
in  the  cities,  or  making  love  to  each  other's  sis 
ters,  or  at  any  rate  unavailable  for  some  reason  or 
other.  There  were  a  few  "  clerks,"  —  that  is, 
young  men  who  attended  shops,  commonly  called 
"  stores,"  —  who  were  fond  of  walking  by  the  In 
stitute,  when  they  were  off  duty,  for  the  sake  of 
exchanging  a  word  or  a  glance  with  any  one  of 
the  young  ladies  they  might  happen  to  know,  if 
any  such  were  stirring  abroad:  crude  young  men, 
mostly,  with  a  great  many  "  Sirs  "  and  "  Ma'ams  " 
in  their  speech,  and  with  that  style  of  address 
sometimes  acquired  in  the  retail  business,  as  if 
the  salesman  were  recommending  himself  to  a 
customer,  —  "  First-rate  family  article,  Ma'am  ; 
warranted  to  wear  a  lifetime ;  just  one  yard  and 
three  quarters  in  this  pattern,  Ma'am  ;  sha'n't  I 
have  the  pleasure  ?  "  and  so  forth.  If  there  had 
been  ever  so  many  of  them,  and  if  they  had  been 
ever  so  fascinating,  the  quarantine  of  the  Institute 
was  too  rigorous  to  allow  any  romantic  infection 
to  be  introduced  from  without. 

Anybody  might  see  what  would  happen,  with 
a  good-looking,  well-dressed,  well-bred  young 
man,  who  had  the  authority  of  a  master,  it  is 
true,  but  the  manners  of  a  friend  and  equal,  mov 
ing  about  among  these  young  girls  day  after  day, 
his  eyes  meeting  theirs,  his  breath  mingling  with 


ELSIE  VENNER.  219 

theirs,  his  voice  growing  familiar  to  them,  never 
in  any  harsh  tones,  often  soothing,  encouraging, 
always  sympathetic,  with  its  male  depth  and 
breadth  of  sound  among  the  chorus  of  trebles,  as 
if  it  were  a  river  in  which  a  hundred  of  these 
little  piping  streamlets  might  lose  themselves  ; 
anybody  might  see  what  would  happen.  Young 
girls  wrote  home  to  their  parents  that  they  en 
joyed  themselves  much,  this  term,  at  the  Institute, 
and  thought  they  were  making  rapid  progress  in 
their  studies.  There  was  a  great  enthusiasm  for 
the  young  master's  reading-classes  in  English 
poetry.  Some  of  the  poor  little  things  began  to 
adorn  themselves  with  an  extra  ribbon,  or  a  bit  of 
such  jewelry  as  they  had  before  kept  for  great  oc 
casions.  Dear  souls!  they  only  half  knew  what 
they  were  doing  it  for.  Does  the  bird  know  why 
its  feathers  grow  more  brilliant  and  its  voice  be 
comes  musical  in  the  pairing  season  ? 

And  so,  in  the  midst  of  this  quiet  inland  town, 
where  a  mere  accident  had  placed  Mr.  Bernard 
Langdon,  there  was  a  concentration  of  explosive 
materials  which  might  at  any  time  change  its  Ar 
cadian  and  academic  repose  into  a  scene  of  dan 
gerous  commotion.  What  said  Helen  Darley, 
when  she  saw  with  her  woman's  glance  that  more 
than  one  girl,  when  she  should  be  looking  at  her 
book,  was  looking  over  it  toward  the  master's 
desk  ?  Was  her  own  heart  warmed  by  any  live 
lier  feeling  than  gratitude,  as  its  life  began  to 
flow  with  fuller  pulses,  and  the  morning  sky 


220  ELSIE  VENNER. 

again  looked  bright  and  the  flowers  recovered 
their  lost  fragrance  ?  "Was  there  any  strange, 
mysterious  affinity  between  the  master  and  the 
dark  girl  who  sat  by  herself?  Could  she  call  him 
at  will  by  looking  at  him  ?  Could  it  be  that 

?  It  made  her  shiver  to  think  of  it.  —  And 

who  was  that  strange  horseman  who  passed  Mr. 
Bernard  at  dusk  the  other  evening,  looking  so  like 
Mephistopheles  galloping  hard  to  be  in  season  at 
the  witches'  Sabbath-gathering  ?  That  must  be 
the  cousin  of  Elsie's  who  wants  to  marry  her, 
they  say.  A  dangerous-looking  fellow  for  a  rival, 
if  one  took  a  fancy  to  the  dark  girl !  And  who  is 
she,  and  what  ?  —  by  what  demon  is  she  haunted, 
by  what  taint  is  she  blighted,  by  what  curse  is 
she  followed,  by  what  destiny  is  she  marked,  that 
her  strange  beauty  has  such  a  terror  in  it,  and 
that  hardly  one  shall  dare  to  love  her,  and  her  eye 
glitters  always,  but  warms  for  none  ? 

Some  of  these  questions  are  ours.  Some  were 
Helen  Barley's.  Some  of  them  mingled  with  the 
dreams  of  Bernard  Langdon,  as  he  slept  the  night 
after  meeting  the  strange  horseman.  In  the  morn 
ing  he  happened  to  be  a  little  late  in  entering  the 
school-room.  There  was  something  between  the 
leaves  of  the  Virgil  which  lay  upon  his  desk.  He 
opened  it  and  saw  a  freshly  gathered  mountain- 
flower.  He  looked  at  Elsie,  instinctively,  invol 
untarily.  She  had  another  such  flower  on  her 
breast. 

A  young  girl's  graceful  compliment, — that  is 


ELSIE  VENNER.  221 

all,  —  no  doubt,  —  no  doubt.  It  was  odd  that  the 
flower  should  have  happened  to  be  laid  between 
the  leaves  of  the  Fourth  Book  of  the  "JBneid," 
and  at  this  line,  — 

"  Incipit  effari,  mediaque  in  voce  resistit." 

A  remembrance  of  an  ancient  superstition  flashed 
through  the  master's  mind,  and  he  determined  to 
try  the  Sortes  Virgillance.  He  shut  the  volume, 
and  opened  it  again  at  a  venture.  —  The  story 
of  Laocoon! 

He  read,  with  a  strange  feeling  of  unwilling 
fascination,  from  "  Horresco  referens "  to  "  Bis 
medium  amplexi"  and  flung  the  book  from  him, 
as  if  its  leaves  had  been  steeped  in  the  subtle  poi 
sons  that  princes  die  of. 


222  ELSIE  VENNER. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

CURIOSITY. 

PEOPLE  will  talk.  Ciascun  lo  dice  is  a  tune 
that  is  played  oftener  than  the  national  air  of 
this  country  or  any  other. 

"  That's  what  they  say.  Means  to  marry  her, 
if  she  is  his  cousin.  Got  money  himself, — that's 
the  story,  —  but  wants  to  come  and  live  in  the 
old  place,  and  get  the  Dudley  property  by-and- 
by." — "  Mother's  folks  was  wealthy."  — "  Twen 
ty-three  to  twenty-five  year  old."  — "  He  a' n't 
more'n  twenty,  or  twenty-one  at  the  outside." 
— "  Looks  as  if  he  knew  too  much  to  be  only 
twenty  year  old."  — "  Guess  he's  been  through 
the  mill,  —  don't  look  so  green,  anyhow,  —  hey  ? 
Did  y'  ever  mind  that  cut  over  his  left  eye 
brow  ? "  • 

So  they  gossipped  in  Rockland.  The  young 
fellows  could  make  nothing  of  Dick  Venner. 
He  was  shy  and  proud  with  the  few  who  made 
advances  to  him.  The  young  ladies  called  him 
handsome  and  romantic,  but  he  looked  at  them 
like  a  many-tailed  pacha  who  was  in  the  habit 
of  ordering  his  wives  by  the  dozen. 


ELSIE  VENNEK.  223 

"  What  do  you  think  of  the  young  man  over 
there  at  the  Venners'  ? "  said  Miss  Arabella 
Thornton  to  her  father. 

"  Handsome,"  said  the  Judge,  "  but  dangerous- 
looking.  His  face  is  indictable  at  common  law. 
Do  you  know,  my  dear,  I  think  there  is  a  blank 
at  the  Sheriff's  office,  with  a  place  for  his  name 
in  it?" 

The  Judge  paused  and  looked  grave,  as  if  he 
had  just  listened  to  the  verdict  of  the  jury  and 
was  going  to  pronounce  sentence. 

"  Have  you  heard  anything  against  him  ?  "  said 
the  Judge's  daughter. 

"  Nothing.  But  I  don't  like  these  mixed  bloods 
and  half-told  stories.  Besides,  I  have  seen  a  good 
many  desperate  fellows  at  the  bar,  and  I  have  a 
fancy  they  all  have  a  look  belonging  to  them. 
The  worst  one  I  ever  sentenced  looked  a  good 
deal  like  this  fellow.  A  wicked  mouth.  /  All  our 
other  features  are  made  for  us  ;  but  a  man  makes 
his  own  mouth."  / 

"  Who  was  the  person  you  sentenced?" 

"  He  was  a  young  fellow  that  undertook  to 
garrote  a  man  who  had  won  his  money  at 
cards.  The  same  slender  shape,  the  same  cun 
ning,  fierce  look,  smoothed  over  with  a  plausi 
ble  air.  Depend  upon  it,  there  is  an  expression 
in  all  the  sort  of  people  who  live  by  their  wits 
when  they  can,  and  by  worse  weapons  when 
their  wits  fail  them,  that  we  old  law-doctors 
know  just  as  well  as  the  medical  counsellors 


224  ELSIE  VEXXER. 

know  the  marks  of  disease  in  a  man's  face.  Dr. 
Kittredge  looks  at  a  man  and  says  he  is  going  to 
die  ;  I  look  at  another  man  and  say  he  is  going 
to  be  hanged,  if  nothing  happens.  I  don't  say  so 
of  this  one,  but  I  don't  like  his  looks.  I  wonder 
Dudley  Venner  takes  to  him  so  kindly." 

"  It's  all  for  Elsie's  sake,"  said  Miss  Thornton ; 
"  I  feel  quite  sure  of  that.  He  never  does  any 
thing  that  is  not  meant  for  her  in  some  way.  I 
suppose  it  amuses  her  to  have  her  cousin  about 
the  house.  She  rides  a  good  deal  since  he  has 
been  here.  Have  you  seen  them  galloping  about 
together  ?  He  looks  like  my  idea  of  a  Spanish 
bandit  on  that  wild  horse  of  his." 

"  Possibly  he  has  been  one,  —  or  is  one,"  said 
the  Judge,  —  smiling  as  men  smile  whose  lips 
have  often  been  freighted  with  the  life  and  death 
of  their  fellow-creatures.  "  I  met  them  riding  the 
other  day.  Perhaps  Dudley  is  right,  if  it  pleases 
her  to  have  a  companion.  What  will  happen, 
though,  if  he  makes  love  to  her  ?  Will  Elsie  be 
easily  taken  with  such  a  fellow  ?  You  young 
folks  are  supposed  to  know  more  about  these 
matters  than  we  middle-aged  people." 

"  Nobody  can  tell.  Elsie  is  not  like  anybody 
else.  The  girls  who  have  seen  most  of  her  think 
she  hates  men,  all  but  '  Dudley,'  as  she  calls  her 
father.  Some  of  them  doubt  whether  she  loves 
him.  They  doubt  whether  she  can  love  anything 
human,  except  perhaps  the  old  black  woman  who 
has  taken  care  of  her  since  she  was  a  baby.  The 


ELSIE  VENNER.  225 

village  people  have  the  strangest  stories  about  her: 
you  know  what  they  call  her  ?  " 

She  whispered  three  words  in  her  father's  ear. 
The  Judge  changed  color  as  she  spoke,  sighed 
deeply,  and  was  silent  as  if  lost  in  thought  for 
a  moment. 

"  I  remember  her  mother,"  he  said,  "  so  well ! 
A  sweeter  creature  never  lived.  Elsie  has  some 
thing  of  her  in  her  look,  but  those  are  not  her 
mother's  eyes.  They  were  dark,  but  soft,  as  in 
all  I  ever  saw  of  her  race.  Her  father's  are  dark 
too,  but  mild,  and  even  tender,  I  should  say.  I 
don't  know  what  there  is  about  Elsie's,  —  but 
do  you  know,  my  dear,  I  find  myself  curiously 
influenced  by  them  ?  I  have  had  to  face  a  good 
many  sharp  eyes  and  hard  ones,  —  murderers' 
eyes  and  pirates',  —  men  who  had  to  be  watched 
in  the  bar,  where  they  stood  on  trial,  for  fear 
they  should  spring  on  the  prosecuting  officers  like 
tigers,  —  but  I  never  saw  such  eyes  as  Elsie's ; 
and  yet  they  have  a  kind  of  drawing  virtue  or 
power  about  them,  —  I  don't  know  what  else  to 
call  it :  have  you  never  observed  this  ?  " 

His  daughter  smiled  in  her  turn. 

"  Never  observed  it  ?  Why,  of  course,  nobody 
could  be  with  Elsie  Venner  and  not  observe  it. 
There  are  a  good  many  other  strange  things  about 
her  :  did  you  ever  notice  how  she  dresses  ?  " 

"  Why,  handsomely  enough,  I  should  think," 
the  Judge  answered.  "  I  suppose  she  dresses  as 
she  likes,  and  sends  to  the  city  for  what  she 

VOL.  4.  15 


226  ELSIE  TENNER. 

wants.  What  do  you  mean  in  particular  ?  We 
men  notice  effects  in  dress,  but  not  much  in  de 
tail." 

"  You  never  noticed  the  colors  and  patterns  of 
her  dresses  ?  You  never  remarked  anything  curi 
ous  about  her  ornaments  ?  Well !  I  don't  be 
lieve  you  men  know,  half  the  time,  whether  a 
lady  wears  a  ninepenny  collar  or  a  thread-lace 
cape  worth  a  thousand  dollars.  I  don't  believe 
you  know  a  silk  dress  from  a  bombazine  one.  I 
don't  believe  you  can  tell  whether  a  woman  is  in 
black  or  in  colors,  unless  you  happen  to  know 
she  is  a  widow.  Elsie  Venner  has  a  strange 
taste  in  dress,  let  me  tell  you.  She  sends  for 
the  oddest  patterns  of  stuffs,  and  picks  out  the 
most  curious  things  at  the  jeweller's,  whenever 
she  goes  to  town  with  her  father.  They  say 
the  old  Doctor  tells  him  to  let  her  have  her  way 
about  all  such  matters.  Afraid  of  her  mind,  if 
she  is  contradicted,  I  suppose.  —  You've  heard 
about  her  going  to  school  at  that  place,  —  the 
'  Institoot,'  as  those  people  call  it  ?  They  say 
she's  bright  enough  in  her  way,  —  has  studied 
at  home,  you  know,  with  her  father  a  good  deal, 
—  knows  some  modern  languages  and  Latin,  I 
believe  :  at  any  rate,  she  would  have  it  so,  —  she 
must  go  to  the  *  Institoot.'  They  have  a  very 
good  female  teacher  there,  I  hear ;  and  the  new 
master,  that  young  Mr.  Langdon,  looks  and  talks 
like  a  well-educated  young  man.  I  wonder  what 
they'll  make  of  Elsie,  between  them  !  " 


ELSIE  VENNER.  227 

So  they  talked  at  the  Judge's,  in  the  calm, 
judicial-looking  mansion-house,  in  the  grave,  still 
library,  with  the  troops  of  wan-hued  law-books 
staring  blindly  out  of  their  titles  at  them  as  they 
talked,  like  the  ghosts  of  dead  attorneys  fixed 
motionless  and  speechless,  each  with  a  thin, 
golden  film  over  his  unwinking  eyes. 

In  the  mean  time,  everything  went  on  quietly 
enough  after  Cousin  Richard's  return.  A  man 
of  sense,  —  that  is,  a  man  who  knows  perfectly 
well  that  a  cool  head  is  worth  a  dozen  warm 
hearts  in  carrying  the  fortress  of  a  woman's  affec 
tions,  (not  yours,  "  Astarte,"  nor  yours,  "  Viola,") 
—  who  knows  that  men  are  rejected  by  women 
every  day  because  they,  the  men,  love  them,  and 
are  accepted  every  day  because  they  do  not,  and 
therefore  can  study  the  arts  of  pleasing,  —  a  man 
of  sense,  when  he  finds  he  has  established  his 
second  parallel  too  soon,  retires  quietly  to  his 
first,  and  begins  working  on  his  covered  ways 
again.  [The  whole  art  of  love  may  be  read  in 
any  Encyclopaedia  under  the  title  Fortification, 
where  the  terms  just  used  are  explained.]  After 
the  little  adventure  of  the  necklace,  Dick  retreated 
at  once  to  his  first  parallel.  Elsie  loved  riding,  — 
and  would  go  off  with  him  on  a  gallop  now 
and  then.  He  was  a  master  of  all  those 
strange  Indian  horseback-feats  which  shame  the 
tricks  of  the  circus-riders,  and  used  to  astonish 
and  almost  amuse  her  sometimes  by  disappear 
ing  from  his  saddle,  like  a  phantom  horseman, 


228  ELSIE  VEXNER. 

lying  flat  against  the  side  of  the  bounding  creat 
ure*  that  bore  him,  as  if  he  were  a  hunting  leop 
ard  with  his  claws  in  the  horse's  flank  and  flat 
tening  himself  out  against  his  heaving  ribs. 
Elsie  knew  a  little  Spanish  too,  which  she  had 
learned  from  the  young  person  who  had  taught 
her  dancing,  and  Dick  enlarged  her  vocabulary 
with  a  few  soft  phrases,  and  would  sing  her  a 
song  sometimes,  touching  the  air  upon  an  an 
cient-looking  guitar  they  had  found  with  the 
ghostly  things  in  the  garret,  —  a  quaint  old  in 
strument,  marked  E.  M.  on  the  back,  and  sup 
posed  to  have  belonged  to  a  certain  Elizabeth 
Mascarene,  before  mentioned  in  connection  with 
a  work  of  art,  —  a  fair,  dowerless  lady,  who 
smiled  and  sung  and  faded  away,  unwedded,  a 
hundred  years  ago,  as  dowerless  ladies,  not  a 
few,  are  smiling  and  singing  and  fading  now, 
—  God  grant  each  of  them  His  love,  —  and  one 
human  heart  as  its  interpreter ! 

As  for  school,  Elsie  went  or  stayed  away  as 
she  liked.  Sometimes,  when  they  thought  she 
was  at  her  desk  in  the  great  school-room,  she 
would  be  on  The  Mountain,  —  alone  always. 
Dick  wanted  to  go  with  her,  but  she  would  never 
let  him.  Once,  when  she  had  followed  the  zigzag 
path  a  little  way  up,  she  looked  back  and  caught 
a  glimpse  of  him  following  her.  She  turned  and 
passed  him  without  a  word,  but  giving  him  a  look 
which  seemed  to  make  the  scars  on  his  wrist  tin 
gle,  went  to  her  room,  where  she  locked  herself 


ELSIE   VENXER.  229 

up,  and  did  not  come  out  again  till  evening, — 
Old  Sophy  having  brought  her  food,  and  set  it 
down,  not  speaking,  but  looking  into  her  eyes 
inquiringly,  like  a  dumb  beast  trying  to  feel  out 
his  master's  will  in  his  face.  The  evening  was 
clear  and  the  moon  shining.  As  Dick  sat  at  his 
chamber-window,  looking  at  the  mountain-side, 
he  saw  a  gray-dressed  figure  flit  between  the  trees 
and  steal  along  the  narrow  path  which  led  up 
ward.  Elsie's  pillow  was  unpressed  that  night, 
but  she  had  not  been  missed  by  the  household,  — 
for  Dick  knew  enough  to  keep  his  own  counsel. 
The  next  morning  she  avoided  him  and  went  off 
early  to  school.  It  was  the  same  morning  that 
the  young  master  found  the  flower  between  the 
leaves  of  his  Virgil. 

The  girl  got  over  her  angry  fit,  and  was  pleas 
ant  enough  with  her  cousin  for  a  few  days  after 
this ;  but  she  shunned  rather  than  sought  him. 
She  had  taken  a  new  interest  in  her  books,  and 
especially  in  certain  poetical  readings  which  the 
master  conducted  with  the  elder  scholars.  This 
gave  Master  Langdon  a  good  chance  to  study  her 
ways  when  her  eye  was  on  her  book,  to  notice  the 
inflections  of  her  voice,  to  watch  for  any  expres 
sion  of  her  sentiments ;  for,  to  tell  the  truth,  he 
had  a  kind  of  fear  that  the  girl  had  taken  a  fancy 
to  him,  and,  though  she  interested  him,  he  did  not 
wish  to  study  her  heart  from  the  inside. 

The  more  he  saw  her,  the  more  the  sadness  of 
her  beauty  wrought  upon  him.  She  looked  as  if 


230  ELSIE  TENNER. 

she  might  hate,  but  could  not  love.  She  hardly 
smiled  at  anything,  spoke  rarely,  but  seemed  to 
feel  that  her  natural  power  of  expression  lay  all  in 
her  bright  eyes,  the  force  of  which  so  many  had 
felt,  but  none  perhaps  had  tried  to  explain  to 
themselves.  A  person  accustomed  to  watch  the 
faces  of  those  who  were  ailing  in  body  or  mind, 
and  to  search  in  every  line  and  tint  for  some  un 
derlying  source  of  disorder,  could  hardly  help  an 
alyzing  the  impression  such  a  face  produced  upon 
him.  The  light  of  those  beautiful  eyes  was  like 
the  lustre  of  ice  ;  in  all  her  features  there  was 
nothing  of  that  human  warmth  which  shows  that 
sympathy  has  reached  the  soul  beneath  the  mask 
of  flesh  it  wears.  The  look  was  that  of  remote 
ness,  of  utter  isolation.  There  was  in  its  stony 
apathy,  it  seemed  to  him,  the  pathos  which  we 
find  in  the  blind  who  show  no  film  or  speck  over 
the  organs  of  sight ;  for  Nature  had  meant  her  to 
be  lovely,  and  left  out  nothing  but  love.  And  yet 
the  master  could  not  help  feeling  that  some  in 
stinct  was  working  in  this  girl  which  was  in  some 
way  leading  her  to  seek  his  presence.  She  did 
not  lift  her  glittering  eyes  upon  him  as  at  first.  It 
seemed  strange  that  she  did  not,  for  they  were 
surely  her  natural  weapons  of  conquest.  Her 
color  did  not  come  and  go  like  that  of  young  girls 
under  excitement.  She  had  a  clear  brunette  com 
plexion,  a  little  sun-touched,  it  may  be,  —  for  the 
master  noticed  once,  when  her  necklace  was 
slightly  displaced,  that  a  faint  ring  or  band  of  a 


ELSIE  VENNER.  231 

little  lighter  shade  than  the  rest  of  the  surface  en 
circled  her  neck.  What  was  the  slight  peculiarity 
of  her  enunciation,  when  she  read  ?  Not  a  lisp, 
certainly,  but  the  least  possible  imperfection  in 
articulating  some  of  the  lingual  sounds,  —  just 
enough  to  be  noticed  at  first,  and  quite  forgotten 
after  being  a  few  times  heard. 

Not  a  word  about  the  flower  on  either  side.  It 
was  not  uncommon  for  the  school-girls  to  leave  a 
rose  or  pink  or  wild  flower  on  the  teacher's  desk. 
Finding  it  in  the  Virgil  was  nothing,  after  all ;  it 
was  a  little  delicate  flower,  which  looked  as  if  it 
were  made  to  press,  and  it  was  probably  shut  in 
by  accident  at  the  particular  place  where  he  found 
it.  He  took  it  into  his  head  to  examine  it  in  a 
botanical  point  of  view.  He  found  it  was  not 
common,  —  that  it  grew  only  in  certain  localities, 
—  and  that  one  of  these  was  among  the  rocks  of 
the  eastern  spur  of  The  Mountain. 

It  happened  to  come  into  his  head  how  the 
Swiss  youth  climb  the  sides  of  the  Alps  to  find 
the  flower  called  the  Edelweiss  for  the  maidens 
whom  they  wish  to  please.  It  is  a  pretty  fancy, 
that  of  scaling  some  dangerous  height  before  the 
dawn,  so  as  to  gather  the  flower  in  its  freshness, 
that  the  favored  maiden  may  wear  it  to  church  on 
Sunday  morning,  a  proof  at  once  of  her  lover's 
devotion  and  his  courage.  Mr.  Bernard  deter 
mined  to  explore  the  region'  where  this  flower  was 
said  to  grow,  that  he  might  see  where  the  wild 
girl  sought  the  blossoms  of  which  Nature  was  so 
jealous. 


232  ELSIE  VENNER. 

It  was  on  a  warm,  fair  Saturday  afternoon  that 
he  undertook  his  land-voyage  of  discovery.  He 
had  more  curiosity,  it  may  be,  than  he  would  have 
owned ;  for  he  had  heard  of  the  girl's  wandering 
habits,  and  the  guesses  about  her  sylvan  haunts, 
and  was  thinking  what  the  chances  were  that  he 
should  meet  her  in  some  strange  place,  or  come 
upon  traces  of  her  which  would  tell  secrets  she 
would  not  care  to  have  known. 

The  woods  are  all  alive  to  one  who  walks 
through  them  with  his  mind  in  an  excited  state, 
and  his  eyes  and  ears  wide  open.  The  trees  are 
always  talking,  not  merely  whispering  with  their 
leaves,  (for  every  tree  talks  to  itself  in  that  way, 
even  when  it  stands  alone  in  the  middle  of  a  pas 
ture,)  but  grating  their  boughs  against  each  other, 
as  old  horn-handed  farmers  press  their  dry,  rus 
tling  palms  together,  dropping  a  nut  or  a  leaf  or  a 
twig,  clicking  to  the  tap  of  a  woodpecker,  or  rus 
tling  as  a  squirrel  flashes  along  a  branch.  It  was 
now  the  season  of  singing-birds,  and  the  woods 
were  haunted  with  mysterious,  tender  music. 
The  voices  of  the  birds  which  love  the  deeper 
shades  of  the  forest  are  sadder  than  those  of  the 
open  fields  :  these  are  the  nuns  who  have  taken 
the  veil,  the  hermifs  that  have  hidden  themselves 
away  from  the  world  and  tell  their  griefs  to  the 
infinite  listening  Silences  of  the  wilderness,  —  for 
the  one  deep  inner  silence  that  Nature  breaks 
with  her  fitful  superficial  sounds  becomes  multi 
plied  as  the  image  of  a  star  in  ruffled  waters. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  233 

Strange !    The  woods  at  first  convey  the  impres 
sion  of  profound  repose,  and  yet,  if  you  watch  their 
ways  with  open  ear,  you  find  the  life  which  is  in 
them  is  restless  and  nervous  as  that  of  a  woman : 
the  little  twigs  are  crossing  and  twining  and  sep 
arating  like  slender  fingers  that  cannot  be  still ; 
the  stray  leaf  is  to  be  flattened  into  its  place  like  a 
truant  curl ;  the  limbs  sway  and  twist,  impatient 
of  their    constrained    attitude ;    and  the  rounded 
masses  of  foliage  swell  upward  and  subside  from 
time  to  time  with  long  soft   sighs,  and,  it  may 
be,  the  falling  of  a  few  rain-drops  which  had  lain 
hidden  among  the  deeper  shadows.     I  pray  you, 
notice,  in  the  sweet  summer  days  which  will  soon 
see  you  among  the  mountains,  this  inward  tran 
quillity  that  belongs  to  the  heart  of  the  woodland, 
with  this  nervousness,  for  I  do  not  know  what 
else  to  call  it,  of  outer  movement.     One  would 
say,  that  Nature,  like  untrained  persons,  could  not 
sit  still  without  nestling  about  or  doing  something 
with  her  limbs  or  features,  and  that  high  breeding 
was  only  to  be  looked  for  in  trim  gardens,  where 
the  soul  of  the  trees  is  ill  at  ease  perhaps,  but  their 
manners    are    unexceptionable,    and    a    rustling 
branch    or   leaf  falling   out  of   season  is  an  in 
decorum.     The  real  forest  is  hardly  still   except 
in  the  Indian  summer ;  then  there  is  death  in  the 
house,  and  they  are  waiting  for  the  sharp  shrunk 
en  months  to  come  with  white  raiment  for  the 
summer's  burial. 

There  were  many  hemlocks  in  this  neighbor- 


234  ELSIE  VENNER. 

hood,  the  grandest  and  most  solemn  of  all  the 
forest-trees  in  the  mountain  regions.  Up  to  a 
certain  period  of  growth  they  are  eminently  beau 
tiful,  their  boughs  disposed  in  the  most  graceful 
pagoda-like  series  of  close  terraces,  thick  and  dark 
with  green  crystalline  leaflets.  In  spring  the  ten 
der  shoots  come  out  of  a  paler  green,  finger-like, 
as  if  they  were  pointing  to  the  violets  at  their 
feet.  But  when  the  trees  have  grown  old,  and 
their  rough  boles  measure  a  yard  and  more 
through  their  diameter,  they  are  no  longer  beau 
tiful,  but  they  have  a  sad  solemnity  all  their  own, 
too  full  of  meaning  to  require  the  heart's  com 
ment  to  be  framed  in  words.  Below,  all  their 
earthward-looking  branches  are  sapless  and  shat 
tered,  splintered  by  the  weight  of  many  winters' 
snows ;  above,  they  are  still  green  and  full  of  life, 
but  their  summits  overtop  all  the  deciduous  trees 
around  them,  and  in  their  companionship  with 
heaven  they  are  alone.  On  these  the  lightning 
loves  to  fall.  One  such  Mr.  Bernard  saw,  —  or 
rather,  what  had  been  one  such ;  for  the  bolt  had 
torn  the  tree  like  an  explosion  from  within,  and 
the  ground  was  strewed  all  around  the  broken 
stump  with  flakes  of  rough  bark  and  strips  and 
chips  of  shivered  wood,  into  which  the  old  tree 
had  been  rent  by  the  bursting  rocket  from  the 
thunder-cloud. 

The  master  had  struck  up  The  Mountain 

obliquely  from  the  western  side  of  the  Dudley 
mansion-house.  In  this  way  he  ascended  until 


ELSIE  VENNER.  235 

he  reached  a  point  many  hundred  feet  above  the 
level  of  the  plain,  and  commanding  all  the  coun 
try  beneath  and  around.  Almost  at  his  feet  he 
saw  the  mansion-house,  the  chimney  standing  out 
of  the  middle  of  the  roof,  or  rather,  like  a  black 
square  hole  in  it,  —  the  trees  almost  directly  over 
their  stems,  the  fences  as  lines,  the  whole  nearly 
as  an  architect  would  draw  a  ground-plan  of  the 
house  and  the  inclosures  round  it.  It  fright 
ened  him  to  see  how  the  huge  masses  of  rock 
and  old  forest-growths  hung  over  the  home  be 
low.  As  he  descended  a  little  and  drew  near 
the  ledge  of  evil  name,  he  was  struck  with  the 
appearance  of  a  long  narrow  fissure  that  ran 
parallel  with  it  and  above  it  for  many  rods,  not 
seemingly  of  very  old  standing,  —  for  there  were 
many  fibres  of  roots  which  had  evidently  been 
snapped  asunder  when  the  rent  took  place,  and 
some  of  which  were  still  succulent  in  both  sep 
arated  portions. 

Mr.  Bernard  had  made  up  his  mind,  when  he 
set  forth,  not  to  come  back  before  he  had  exam 
ined  the  dreaded  ledge.  He  had  half  persuaded 
himself  that  it  was  scientific  curiosity.  He 
wished  to  examine  the  rocks,  to  see  what  flow 
ers  grew  there,  and  perhaps  to  pick  up  an  ad 
venture  in  the  zoological  line ;  for  he  had  on  a 
pair  of  high,  stout  boots,  and  he  carried  a  stick 
in  his  hand,  which  was  forked  at  one  extremity, 
so  as  to  be  very  convenient  to  hold  down  a 
crotalus  with,  if  he  should  happen  to  encounter 


236  ELSIE  VENSTER. 

one.  He  knew  the  aspect  of  the  ledge  from  a 
distance;  for  its  bald  and  leprous-looking  de 
clivities  stood  out  in  their  nakedness  from  the 
wooded  sides  of  The  Mountain,  when  this  was 
viewed  from  certain  points  of  the  village.  But 
the  nearer  aspect  of  the  blasted  region  had  some 
thing  frightful  in  it.  The  cliffs  were  water-worn, 
as  if  they,  had  been  gnawecl  for  thousands  of 
years  by  hungry  waves.  In  some  places  they 
overhung  their  base  so  as  to  look  like  leaning 
towers  which  might  topple  over  at  any  minute. 
In  other  parts  they  were  scooped  into  niches  or 
caverns.  Here  and  there  they  were  cracked  in 
deep  fissures,  some  of  them  of  such  width  that 
one  might  enter  them,  if  he  cared  to  run  the 
risk  of  meeting  the  regular  tenants,  who  might 
treat  him  as  an  intruder. 

Parts  of  the  ledge  were  cloven  perpendicu 
larly,  with  nothing  but  cracks  or  slightly  project 
ing  edges  in  which  or  on  which  a  foot  could 
find  hold.  High  up  on  one  of  these  precipitous 
walls  of  rock  he  saw  some  tufts  of  flowers,  and 
knew  them  at  once  for  the  same  that  he  had 
found  between  the  leaves  of  his  Virgil.  Not 
there,  surely!  No  woman  would  have  clung 
against  that  steep,  rough  parapet  to  gather  an 
idle  blossom.  And  yet  the  master  looked  round 
everywhere,  and  even  up  the  side  of  that  rock, 
to  see  if  there  were  no  signs  of  a  woman's  foot 
step.  He  peered  about  curiously,  as  if  his  eye 
might  fall  on  some  of  those  fragments  of  dress 


ELSIE  VENNER.  237 

which  women  leave  after  them,  whenever  they 
run  against  each  other  or  against  anything  else, 
—  in  crowded  ballrooms,  in  the  brushwood  after 
picnics,  on  the  fences  after  rambles,  scattered 
round  over  every  place  which  has  witnessed  an 
act  of  violence,  where  rude  hands  have  been 
laid  upon  them.  Nothing.  Stop,  though,  one 
moment.  That  stone  is  smooth  and  polished, 
as  if  it  had  been  somewhat  worn  by  the  press 
ure  of  human  feet.  There  is  one  twig  broken 
among  the  stems  of  that  clump  of  shrubs.  He 
put  his  foot  upon  the  stone  and  took  hold  of 
the  close-clinging  shrub.  In  this  way  he  turned 
a  sharp  angle  of  the  rock  and  found  himself  on 
a  natural  platform,  which  lay  in  front  of  one  of 
the  wider  fissures.  —  whether  the  mouth  of  a  cav 
ern  or  not  he  could  not  yet  tell.  A  flat  stone 
made  an  easy  seat,  upon  which  he  sat  down,  as 
he  was  very  glad  to  do,  and  looked  mechanically 
about  him.  A  small  fragment  splintered  from 
the  rock  was  at  his  feet.  He  took  it  and  threw 
it  down  the  declivity  a  little  below  where  he  sat. 
He  looked  about  for  a  stem  or  a  straw  of  some 
kind  to  bite  upon,  —  a  country -instinct,  —  relic, 
no  doubt,  of  the  old  vegetable-feeding  habits  of 
Eden.  Is  that  a  stem  or  a  straw?  He  picked  it 
up.  It  was  a  hair-pin. 

To  say  that  Mr.  Langdon  had  a  strange  sort 
of  thrill  shoot  through  him  at  the'  sight  of  this 
harmless  little  implement  would  be  a  statement 
not  at  variance  with  the  fact  of  the  case.  That 


238  ELSIE  VENNER. 

smooth  stone  had  been  often  trodden,  and  by 
what  foot  he  could  not  doubt.  He  rose  up  from 
his  seat  to  look  round  for  other  signs  of  a  wom 
an's  visits.  What  if  there  is  a  cavern  here,  where 
she  has  a  retreat,  fitted  up,  perhaps,  as  anchorites 
fitted  their  cells,  —  nay,  it  maybe,  carpeted  and 
mirrored,  and  with  one  of  those  tiger-skins  for  a 
couch,  such  as  they  say  the  girl  loves  to  lie  on  ? 
Let  us  look,  at  any  rate. 

Mr.  Bernard  walked  to  the  mouth  of  the  cav 
ern  or  fissure  and  looked  into  it.  His  look  was 
met  by  the  glitter  of  two  diamond  eyes,  small, 
sharp,  cold,  shining  out  of  the  darkness,  but  glid 
ing  with  a  smooth,  steady  motion  towards  the 
light,  and  himself.  He  stood  fixed,  struck  dumb, 
staring  back  into  them  with  dilating  pupils  and 
sudden  numbness  of  fear  that  cannot  move,  as  in 
the  terror  of  dreams.  The  two  sparks  of  light 
came  forward  until  they  grew  to  circles  of  flame, 
and  all  at  once  lifted  themselves  up  as  if  in  angry 
surprise.  Then  for  the  first  time  thrilled  in  Mr. 
Bernard's  ears  the  dreadful  sound  that  nothing 
which  breathes,  be  it  man  or  brute,  can  hear 
unmoved,  —  the  long,  loud,  stinging  whirr,  as  the 
huge,  thick-bodied  reptile  shook  his  many-jointed 
rattle  and  adjusted  his  loops  for  the  fatal  stroke. 
His  eyes  were  drawn  as  with  magnets  toward  the 
circles  of  flame.  His  ears  rung  as  in  the  over 
ture  to  the  swooning  dream  of  chloroform.  Na 
ture  was  before  man  with  her  anaesthetics :  the 
cat's  first  shake  stupefies  the  mouse  ;  the  lion's 


ELSIE  VENNEK.  2.39 

first  shake  deadens  the  man's  fear  and  feeling ; 
and  the  crotalus  paralyzes  before  he  strikes.  He 
waited  as  in  a  trance,  —  waited  as  one  that  longs 
to  have  the  blow  fall,  and  all  over,  as  the  man  who 
shall  be  in  two  pieces  in  a  second  waits  for  the 
axe  to  drop.  But  while  he  looked  straight  into 
the  flaming  eyes,  it  seemed  to  him  that  they  were 
losing  their  light  and  terror,  that  they  were  grow 
ing  tame  and  dull ;  the  charm  was  dissolving,  the 
numbness  was  passing  away,  he  could  move  once 
more.  He  heard  a  light  breathing  close  to  his 
ear,  and,  half  turning,  saw  the  face  of  Elsie  Ven- 
ner,  looking  motionless  into  the  reptile's  eyes, 
which  had  shrunk  and  faded  under  the  stronger 
enchantment  of  her  own. 


240  ELSIE  VENNER. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

FAMILY    SECRETS. 

IT  was  commonly  understood  in  the  town  of 
Rockland  that  Dudley  Venner  had  had  a  great 
deal  of  trouble  with  that  daughter  of  his,  so  hand 
some,  yet  so  peculiar,  about  whom  there  were  so 
many  strange  stories.  There  was  no  end  to  the 
tales  which  were  told  of  her  extraordinary  doings. 
Yet  her  name  was  never  coupled  with  that  of  any 
youth  or  man,  until  this  cousin  had  provoked  re 
mark  by  his  visit ;  and  even  then  it  was  oftener 
in  the  shape  of  wondering  conjectures  whether  he 
would  dare  to  make  love  to  her,  than  in  any  pre 
tended  knowledge  of  their  relations  to  each  other, 
that  the  public  tongue  exercised  its  village-pre 
rogative  of  tattle. 

The  more  common  version  of  the  trouble  at  the 
mansion-house  was  this:  —  Elsie  was  not  exactly 
in  her  right  mind.  Her  temper  was  singular,  her 
tastes  were  anomalous,  her  habits  were  lawless, 
her  antipathies  were  many  and  intense,  and  she 
was  liable  to  explosions  of  ungovernable  anger. 
Some  said  that  was  not  the  worst  of  it.  At 
nearly  fifteen  years  old,  when  she  was  growing 


ELSIE  VENNER.  241 

fast,  and  in  an  irritable  state  of  mind  and  body, 
she  had  had  a  governess  placed  over  her  for 
whom  she  had  conceived  an  aversion.  It  was 
whispered  among  a  few  who  knew  more  of  the 
family  secrets  than  others,  that,  worried  and  ex 
asperated  by  the  presence  and  jealous  oversight 
of  this  person,  Elsie  had  attempted  to  get  finally 
rid  of  her  by  unlawful  means,  such  as  young  girls 
have  been  known  to  employ  in  their  straits,  and 
to  which  the  sex  at  all  ages  has  a  certain  instinct 
ive  tendency,  in  preference  to  more  palpable  in 
struments  for  the  righting  of  its  wrongs.  At  any 
rate,  this  governess  had  been  taken  suddenly  ill, 
and  the  Doctor  had  been  sent  for  at  midnight. 
Old  Sophy  had  taken  her  master  into,  a  room 
apart,  and  said  a  few  words  to  him  which  turned 
him  as  white  as  a  sheet.  As  soon  as  he  recov 
ered  himself,  he  sent  Sophy  out,  called  in  the  old 
Doctor,  and  gave  him  some  few  hints,  on  which 
he  acted  at  once,  and  had  the  satisfaction  of  see 
ing  his  patient  out  of  danger  before  he  left  in  the 
morning.  It  is  proper  to  say,  that,  during  the  fol 
lowing  days,  the  most  thorough  search  was  made 
in  every  nook  and  cranny  of  those  parts  of  the 
house  which  Elsie  chiefly  haunted,  but  nothing 
was  found  which  might  be  accused  of  having 
been  the  intentional  cause  of  the  probably  acci 
dental  sudden  illness  of  the  governess.  From 
this  time  forward  her  father  was  never  easy. 
Should  he  keep  her  apart,  or  shut  her  up,  for  fear 
of  risk  to  others,  and  so  lose  every  chance  of 

VOL.   I.  16 


242  ELSIE  VEXXER. 

restoring  her  mind  to  its  healthy  tone  by  kindly 
influences  and  intercourse  with  wholesome  na 
tures  ?  There  was  no  proof,  only  presumption, 
as  to  the  agency  of  Elsie  in  the  matter  referred 
to.  But  the  doubt  was  worse,  perhaps,  than  cer 
tainty  would  have  been,  —  for  then  he  would  have 
known  what  to  do. 

He  took  the  old  Doctor  as  his  adviser.  The 
shrewd  old  man  listened  to  the  father's  story,  his 
explanations  of  possibilities,  of  probabilities,  of 
dangers,  of  hopes.  When  he  had  got  through, 
the  Doctor  looked  him  in  the  face  steadily,  as  if 
he  were  saying,  Is  that  all? 

The  father's  eyes  fell.  This  was  not  all.  There 
was  something  at  the  bottom  of  his  soul  which 
he  could  not  bear  to  speak  of,  —  nay,  which,  as 
often  as  it  reared  itself  through  the  dark  waves 
of  unworded  consciousness  into  the  breathing  air 
of  thought,  he  trod  down  as  the  ruined  angels 
tread  down  a  lost  soul  trying  to  come  up  out  of. 
the  seething  sea  of  torture.  Only  this  one  daugh 
ter  !  No  !  God  never  would  have  ordained  such 
a  thing.  There  was  nothing  ever  heard  of  like  it ; 
it  could  not  be  ;  she  was  ill,  —  she  would  outgrow 
all  these  singularities ;  he  had  had  an  aunt  who 
was  peculiar ;  he  had  heard  that  hysteric  girls 
showed  the  strangest  forms  of  moral  obliquity  for 
a  time,  but  came  right  at  last.  She  would  change 
all  at  once,  when  her  health  got  more  firmly  set 
tled  in  the  course  of  her  growth.  Are  there  not 
rough  buds  that  open  into  sweet  flowers  ?  Are 


ELSIE  VENNER.  243 

there  not  fruits,  which,  while  unripe,  are  not  to  be 
tasted  or  endured,  which  mature  into  the  richest 
taste  and  fragrance?  In  God's  good  time  she 
would  come  to  her  true  nature  ;  her  eyes  would 
lose  that  frightful,  cold  glitter  ;  her  lips  would  not 
feel  so  cold  when  she  pressed  them  against  his 
cheek ;  and  that  faint  birth-mark,  her  mother 
swooned  when  she  first  saw,  would  fade  wholly 
out,  —  it  was  less  marked,  surely,  now  than  it 
used  to  be  ! 

So  Dudley  Venner  felt,  and  would  have  thought, 
if  he  had  let  his  thoughts  breathe  the  air  of  his 
soul.  But  the  Doctor  read  through  words  and 
thoughts  and  all  into  the  father's  consciousness. 
There  are  states  of  mind  which  may  be  shared 
by  two  persons  in  presence  of  each  other,  which 
remain  not  only  unworded,  but  unthoughtedJif 
such  a  word  may  be  coined  for  our  special  need. 
Such  a  mutually  interpenetrative  consciousness 
there  was  between  the  father  and  the  old  physi 
cian.  By  a  common  impulse,  both  of  them  rose 
in  a  mechanical  way  and  went  to  the  western 
window,  where  each  started,  as  he  saw  the  other's 
look  directed  towards  the  white  stone  which 
stood  in  the  midst  of  the  small  plot  of  green  turf. 

The  Doctor  had,  for  a  moment,  forgotten  him 
self,  but  he  looked  ur>  at  the  clouds,  which  were 
angry,  and  said,  as  if  speaking  of  the  weather, 
"  It  is  dark  now,  but  we  hope  it  will  clear  up  by- 
and-by.  There  are  a  great  many  more  clouds 
than  rains,  and  more  rains  than  strokes  of  light- 


244  ELSIE  TENNER. 

ning,  and  more  strokes  of  lightning  than  there  are 
people  killed.  We  must  let  this  girl  of  ours  have 
her  way,  as  far  as  it  is  safe.  Send  away  this 
woman  she  hates,  quietly.  Get  her  a  foreigner 
for  a  governess,  if  you  can,  —  one  that  can  dance 
and  sing  and  will  teach"  her.  In  the  house  old 
Sophy  will  watch  her  best.  Out  of  it  you  must 
trust  her,  I  am  afraid,  —  for  she  will  not  be  fol 
lowed  round,  and  she  is  in  less  danger  than  you 
think.  If  she  wanders  at  night,  find  her,  if  you 
can ;  the  woods  are  not  absolutely  safe.  If  she 
will  be  friendly  with  any  young  people,  have 
them  to  see  her,  —  young  men,  especially.  She 
will  not  love  any  one  easily,  perhaps  not  at  all ; 
yet  love  would  be  more  like  to  bring  her  right 
than  anything  else.  If  any  young  person  seems 
in  danger  of  falling  in  love  with  her,  send  him  to 
me  for  counsel." 

Dry,  hard  advice,  but  given  from  a  kind  heart, 
with  a  moist  eye,  and  in  tones  which  tried  to  be 
cheerful  and  were  full  of  sympathy.  This  advice 
was  the  key  to  the  more  than  indulgent  treatment 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  the  girl  had  received 
from  her  father  and  all  about  her.  The  old  Doc 
tor  often  came  in,  in  the  kindest,  most  natural 
sort  of  way,  got  into  pleasant  relations  with  El 
sie  by  always  treating  her  in  the  same  easy  man 
ner  as  at  the  great  party,  encouraging  all  her 
harmless  fancies,  and  rarely  reminding  her  that 
he  was  a  professional  adviser,  except  when  she 
came  out  of  her  own  accord,  as  in  the  talk  they 


ELSIE  VENNER.  245 

had  at  the  party,  telling  him  of  some  wild  trick 
she  had  been  playing. 

"  Let  her  go  to  the  girls'  school,  by  all  means," 
said  the  Doctor,  when  she  had  begun  to  talk 
about  it.  u  Possibly  she  may  take  to  some  of 
the  girls  or  of  the  teachers.  Anything  to  interest 
her.  Friendship,  love,  religion,  —  whatever  will 
set  her  nature  at  work.  We  must  have  head 
way  on,  or  there  will  be  no  piloting  her.  Action 
first  of  all,  and  then  we  will  see  what  to  do 
with  it." 

So,  when  Cousin  Richard  came  along,  the 
Doctor,  though  he  did  not  like  his  looks  any  too 
well,  told  her  father  to  encourage  his  staying  for 
a  time.  If  she  liked  him,  it  was  good ;  if  she 
only  tolerated  him,  it  was  better  than  nothing. 

"  You  know  something  about  that  nephew  of 
yours,  during  these  last  years,  I  suppose  ?  "  the 
Doctor  said.  "  Looks  as  if  he  had  seen  life. 
Has  a  scar  that  was  made  by  a  sword-cut,  and 
a  white  spot  on  the  side  of  his  neck  that  looks 
like  a  bullet-mark.  I  think  he  has  been  what 
folks  call  a  '  hard  customer.'  " 

Dudley  Venner  owned  that  he  had  heard  little 
or  nothing  of  him  of  late  years.  He  had  invited 
himself,  and  of  course  it  would  not  be  decent 
not  to  receive  him  as  a  relative.  He  thought 
Elsie  rather  liked  having  him  about  the  house 
for  a  while.  She  was  very  capricious,  —  acted 
as  if  she  fancied  him  one  day  and  disliked  him 
the  next.  He  did  not  know,  —  but  sometimes 


246  ELSII:  YKXNKI;. 

thought  that  this  nephew  of  his  might  take  a  seri 
ous  liking  to  Elsie.  What  should  he  do  about 
it,  if  it  turned  out  so  ? 

The  Doctor  lifted  his  eyebrows  a  little.  He 
thought  there  was  no  fear.  Elsie  was  naturally 
what  they  call  a  man-hater,  and  there  was  very 
little  danger  of  any  sudden  passion  springing  up 
between  two  such  young  persons.  Let  him  stay 
awhile  ;  it  gives  her  something  to  think  about. 
So  he  stayed  awhile,  as  we  have  seen. 

The  more  Mr.  Richard  became  acquainted 
with  the  family,  —  that  is,  with  the  two  persons 
of  whom  it  consisted,  —  the  more  favorably  the 
idea  of  a  permanent  residence  in  the  mansion- 
house  seemed  to  impress  him.  The  estate  was 
large,  —  hundreds  of  acres,  with  woodlands  and 
meadows  of  great  value.  The  father  and  daugh 
ter  had  been  living  quietly,  and  there  could  not 
be  a  doubt  that  the  property  which  carne  through 
the  Dudleys  must  have  largely  increased  of  late 
years.  It  was  evident  enough  that  they  had  an 
abundant  income,  from  the  way  in  which  Elsie's 
caprices  were  indulged.  She  had  horses  and  car 
riages  to  suit  herself ;  she  sent  to  the  great  city 
for  everything  she  wanted  in  the  way  of  dress. 
Even  her  diamonds — and  the  young  man  knew 
something  about  these  gems — must  be  of  con 
siderable  value ;  and  yet  she  wore  them  care 
lessly,  as  it  pleased  her  fancy.  She  had  precious 
old  laces,  too,  almost  worth  their  weight  in  dia 
monds,  —  laces  which  had  been  snatched  from 


ELSIE  VENNER.  247 

altars  in  ancient  Spanish  cathedrals  during  the 
wars,  and  which  it  would  not  be  safe  to  leave  a 
duchess  alone  with  for  ten  minutes.  The  old 
house  was  fat  with  the  deposits  of  rich  genera 
tions  which  had  gone  before.  The  famous  "  gold 
en  "  fire-set  was  a  purchase  of  one  of  the  family 
who  had  been  in  France  during  the  Revolution, 
and  must  have  come  from  a  princely  palace,  if 
not  from  one  of  the  royal  residences.  As  for 
silver,  the  iron  closet  which  had  been  made  in  the 
dining-room  wall  was  running  over  with  it :  tea 
kettles,  coffee-pots,  heavy-lidded  tankards,  chafing- 
dishes,  punch-bowls,  all  that  all  the  Dudleys  had 
ever  used,  from  the  caudle-cup  which  used  to  be 
handed  round  the  young  mother's  chamber,  and 
the  porringer  from  which  children  scooped  their 
bread-and-milk  with  spoons  as  solid  as  ingots, 
to  that  ominous  vessel,  on  the  upper  shelf,  far 
back  in  the  dark,  with  a  spout  like  a  slender 
italic  $,  out  of  which  the  sick  and  dying,  all 
along  the  last  century,  and  since,  had  taken  the 
last  drops  that  passed  their  lips.  Without  being 
much  of  a  scholar,  Dick  could  see  well  enough, 
too,  that  the  books  in  the  library  had  been  ordered 
from  the  great  London  houses,  whose  imprint 
they  bore,  by  persons  who  knew  what  was  best 
and  meant  to  have  it.  A  man  does  not  require 
much  learning  to  feel  pretty  sure,  when  he  takes 
one  of  those  solid,  smooth,  velvet-leaved  quartos, 
say  a  Baskerville  Addison,  for  instance,  bound  in 
red  morocco,  with  a  margin  of  gold  as  rich  as 


248  ELSIE  VENNER. 

the  embroidery  of  a  prince's  collar,  as  Vandyck 
drew  it,  —  he  need  not  know  much  to  feel  pretty 
sure  that  a  score  or  two  of  shelves  full  of  such 
books  mean  that  it  took  a  long  purse,  as  well 
as  a  literary  taste,  to  bring  them  together. 

To  all  these  attractions  the  mind  of  this 
thoughtful  young  gentleman  may  be  said  to  have 
been  fully  open.  He  did  not  disguise  from  him 
self,  however,  that  there  were  a  number  of  draw 
backs  in  the  way  of  his  becoming  established  as 
the  heir  of  the  Dudley  mansion-house  and  for 
tune.  In  the  first  place,  Cousin  Elsie  was,  un 
questionably,  very  piquant,  very  handsome,  game 
as  a  hawk,  and  hard  to  please,  which  made  her 
worth  trying  for.  But  then  there  was  something 
about  Cousin  Elsie,  —  (the  small,  white  scars 
began  stinging,  as  he  said  this  to  himself,  and  he 
pushed  his  sleeve  up  to  look  at  them,)  —  there 
was  something  about  Cousin  Elsie  he  couldn't 
make  out.  What  was  the  matter  with  her  eyes, 
that  they  sucked  your  life  out  of  you  in  that 
strange  way  ?  What  did  she  always  wear  a 
necklace  for?  Had  she  some  such  love-token  on 
her  neck  as  the  old  Don's  revolver  had  left  on 
his  ?  How*  safe  would  anybody  feel  to  live  with 
her  ?  Besides,  her  father  would  last  forever,  if 
he  was  left  to  himself.  And  he  may  take  it 
into  his  head  to  marry  again.  That  would  be 
pleasant ! 

So  talked  Cousin  Richard  to  himself,  in  the 
calm  of  the  night  and  in  the  tranquillity  of  his 


ELSIE  VENNER.  249 

own  soul.  There  was  much  to  be  said  on  both 
sides.  It  was  a  balance  to  be  struck  after  the 
two  columns  were  added  up.  He  struck  the 
balance,  and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  he 
would  fall  in  love  with  Elsie  Venner. 

The  intelligent  reader  will  not  confound  this 
matured  and  serious  intention  of  falling  in  love 
with  the  young  lady  with  that  mere  impulse  of 
the  moment  before  mentioned  as  an  instance  of 
making  love.  On  the  contrary,  the  moment  Mr. 
Richard  had  made  up  his  mind  that  he  should  fall 
in  love  with  Elsie,  he  began  to  be  more  reserved 
with  her,  and  to  try  to  make  friends  in  other 
quarters.  Sensible  men,  you  know,  care  very 
little  what  a  girl's  present  fancy  is.  The  ques 
tion  is  :  Who  manages  her,  and  how  can  you  get 
at  that  person  or  those  persons  ?  Her  foolish 
little  sentiments  are  all  very  well  in  their  way ; 
but  business  is  business,  and  we  can't  stop  for 
such  trifles.  The  old  political  wire-pullers  never 
go  near  the  man  they  want  to  gain,  if  they  can 
help  it;  they  .find  out  who  his  intimates  and 
managers  are,  and  work  through  them.  Always 
handle  any  positively  electrical  body,  whether  it 
is  charged  with  passion  or  power,  with  some  non 
conductor  between  you  and  it,  not  with  your 
naked  hands.  —  The  above  were  some  of  the 
young  gentleman's  working  axioms  ;  and  he  pro 
ceeded  to  act  in  accordance  with  them. 

He  began  by  paying  his  court  more  assiduously 
to  his  uncle.  It  was  not  very  hard  to  ingratiate 


250  ELSIE  VENXER. 

himself  in  that  quarter ;  for  his  manners  were  in 
sinuating,  and  his  precocious  experience  of  life 
made  him  entertaining.  The  old  neglected  bil 
liard-room  was  soon  put  in  order,  and  Dick,  who 
was  a  magnificent  player,  had  a  series  of  games 
with  his  uncle,  in  which,  singularly  enough,  he 
was  beaten,  though  his  antagonist  had  been  out 
of  play  for  years.  He  evinced  a  profound  interest 
in  the  family  history,  insisted  on  having  the  de 
tails  of  its  early  alliances,  and  professed  a  great 
pride  in  it,  which  he  had  inherited  from  his  father, 
who,  though  he  had  allied  himself  with  the  daugh 
ter  of  an  alien  race,  had  yet  chosen  one  with  the 
real  azure  blood  in  her  veins,  as  proud  as  if  she 
had  Castile  and  Aragon  for  her  dower  and  the 
Cid  for  her  grandpapa.  He  also  asked  a  great 
deal  of  advice,  such  as  inexperienced  young  per 
sons  are  in  need  of,  and  listened  to  it  with  due 
reverence. 

It  is  not  very  strange  that  Uncle  Dudley  took 
a  kinder  view  of  his  nephew  than  the .  Judge, 
who  thought  he  could  read  a  questionable  his 
tory  in  his  face,  —  or  the  old  Doctor,  who  knew 
men's  temperaments  and  organizations  pretty 
well,  and  had  his  prejudices  about  races,  and 
could  tell  an  old  sword-cut  and  a  bullet-mark 
in  two  seconds  from  a  scar  got  by  falling  against 
the  fender,  or  a  mark  left  by  king's  evil.  He 
could  not  be  expected  to  share  our  own  preju 
dices  ;  for  he  had  heard  nothing  of  the  wild 
youth's  adventures,  or  his  scamper  over  the  Pam- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  251 

pas  at  short  notice.  So,  then,  "  Richard  Venner, 
Esquire,  guest  of  Dudley  Venner,  Esquire,  at  his 
elegant  mansion,"  prolonged  his  visit  until  his 
presence  became  something  like  a  matter  of  hab 
it,  and  the  neighbors  began  to  think  that  the  fine 
old  house  would  be  illuminated  before  long  for 
a  grand  marriage. 

He  had  done  pretty  well  with  the  father :  the 
next  thing  was  to  gain  over  the  nurse.*  Old  So 
phy  was  as  cunning  as  a  red  fox  or  a  gray  wood- 
chuck.  She  had  nothing  in  the  world  to  do  but 
to  watch  Elsie ;  she  had  nothing  to  care  for  but 
this  girl  and  her  father.  She  had  never  liked  Dick 
too  well ;  for  he  used  to  make  faces  at  her  and 
tease  her  when  he  was  a  boy,  and  now  he  was  a 
man  there  was  something  about  him  — she  could 
not  tell  what  —  that  made  her  suspicious  of  him. 
It  was  no  small  matter  to  get  her  over  to  his  side. 

The  jet-black  Africans  know  that  gold  never 
looks  so  well  as  on  the  foil  of  their  dark  skins. 
Dick  found  in  his  trunk  a  string  of  gold  beads, 
such  as  are  manufactured  in  some  of  our  cities, 
which  he  had  brought  from  the  gold  region  of 
Chili,  —  so  he  said,  —  for  the  express  purpose  of 
giving  them  to  old  Sophy.  These  Africans,  too, 
have  a  perfect  passion  for  gay-colored  clothing; 
being  condemned  by  Nature,  as  it  were,  to  a  per 
petual  mourning-suit,  they  love  to  enliven  it  with 
all  sorts  of  variegated  stuffs  of  sprightly  patterns, 
aflame  with  red  and  yellow.  The  considerate 
young  man'had  remembered  this,  too,  and  brought 
home  for  Sophy  some  handkerchiefs  of  rainbow 


252  ELSIE  VENNER. 

hues,  which  had  been  strangely  overlooked  till 
now,  at  the  bottom  of  one  of  his  trunks.  Old 
Sophy  took  his  gifts,  but  kept  her  black  eyes  open 
and  watched  every  movement  of  the  young  peo 
ple  all  the  more  closely.  It  was  through  her  that 
the  father  had  always  known  most  of  the  actions 
and  tendencies  of  his  daughter. 

In  the  mean  time  the  strange  adventure  on  The 
Mountain  had  brought  the  young  master  into  new 
relations  with  Elsie.  She  had  led  him  out  of  dan 
ger  ;  perhaps  saved  him  from  death  by  the  strange 
power  she  exerted.  He  was  grateful,  and  yet 
shuddered  at  the  recollection  of  the  whole  scene. 
In  his  dreams  he  was  pursued  by  the  glare  of  cold 
glittering  eyes,  —  whether  they  were  in  the  head 
of  a  woman  or  of  a  reptile  he  could  not  always 
tell,  the  images  had  so  run  together.  But  he 
could  not  help  seeing  that  the  eyes  of  the  young 
girl  had  been  often,  very  often,  turned  upon  him 
when  he  had  been  looking  away,  and  fell  as  his 
own  glance  met  them.  Helen  Darley  told  him 
very  plainly  that  this  girl  was  thinking  about  him 
more  than  about  her  book.  Dick  Venner  found 
she  was  getting  more  constant  in  her  attendance 
at  school.  He  learned,  on  inquiry,  that  there  was 
a  new  master,  a  handsome  young  man.  The 
handsome  young  man  would  not  have  liked  the 
look  that  came  over  Dick's  face  when  he  heard 
this  fact  mentioned. 

In  short,  everything  was  getting  tangled  up 
together,  and  there  would  be  no  chance  of  disen 
tangling  the  threads  in  this  chapter. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  253 


CHAPTER   XV. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL. 

IF  Master  Bernard  felt  a  natural  gratitude  to 
his  young  pupil  for  saving  him  from  an  imminent 
peril,  he  was  in  a  state  of  infinite  perplexity  to 
know  why  he  should  have  needed  such  aid.  He, 
an  active,  muscular,  courageous,  adventurous 
young  fellow,  with  a  stick  in  his  hand,  ready  to 
hold  down  the  Old  Serpent  himself,  if  he  had 
come  in  his  way,  to  stand  still,  staring  into  those 
two  eyes,  until  they  came  up  close  to  him,  and 
the  strange,  terrible  sound  seemed  to  freeze  him 
stiff  where  he  stood,  —  what  was  the  meaning  of 
it  ?  Again,  what  was  the  influence  this  girl  had 
seemingly  exerted,  under  which  the  venomous 
creature  had  collapsed  in  such  a  sudden  way  ? 
Whether  he  had  been  awake  or  dreaming  he  did 
not  feel  quite  sure.  He  knew  he  had  gone  up 
The  Mountain,  at  any  rate ;  he  knew  he  had 
come  down  The  Mountain  with  the  girl  walking 
just  before  him  ;  —  there  was  no  forgetting  her 
figure,  as  she  walked  on  in  silence,  her  braided 
locks  falling  a  little,  for  want  of  the  lost  hair-pin, 
perhaps,  and  looking  like  a  wreathing  coil  of 


254  ELSIE  VENNER. 

Shame  on  such  fancies  !  —  to  wrong  that  su 
preme  crowning  gift  of  abounding  Nature,  a  rush 
of  shining  black  hair,  which,  shaken  loose,  would 
cloud  her  all  round,  like  Godiva,  from  brow  to 
instep  !  He  was  sure  he  had  sat  down  before  the 
fissure  or  cave.  He  was  sure  that  he  was  led 
softly  away  from  the  place,  and  that  it  was  Elsie 
who  had  led  him.  There  was  the  hair-pin  to  show 
that  so  far  it  was  not  a  dream.  But  between 
these  recollections  came  a  strange  confusion;  and 
the  more  the  master  thought,  the  more  he  was 
perplexed  to  know  whether  she  had  \vaked  him, 
sleeping,  as  he  sat  on  the  stone,  from  some  fright 
ful  dream,  such  as  may  come  in  a  very  brief  slum 
ber,  or  whether  she  had  bewitched  him  into  a 
trance  with  those  strange  eyes  of  hers,  or  whether 
it  was  all  true,  and  he  must  solve  its  problem  as 
he  best  might. 

There  was  another  recollection  connected  with 
this  mountain  adventure.  As  they  approached 
the  mansion-house,  they  met  a  young  man,  whom 
Mr.  Bernard  remembered  having  seen  once  at 
least  before,  and  whom  he  had  heard  of  as  a 
cousin  of  the  young  girl.  As  Cousin  Richard 
Venner,  the  person  in  question,  passed  them,  he 
took  the  measure,  so  to  speak,  of  Mr.  Bernard, 
with  a  look  so  piercing,  so  exhausting,  so  prac 
tised,  so  profoundly  suspicious,  that  the  young 
master  felt  in  an  instant  that  he  had  an  enemy  in 
this  handsome  youth,  —  an  enemy,  too,  who  was 
like  to  be  subtle  and  dangerous. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  255 

Mr.  Bernard  had  made  up  his  mind,  that,  come 
what  might,  enemy  or  no  enemy,  live  or  die,  he 
would  solve  the  mystery  of  Elsie  Venner,  sooner 
or  later.  He  was  not  a  man  to  be  frightened  out 
of  his  resolution  by  a  scowl,  or  a  stiletto,  or  any 
unknown  means  of  mischief,  of  which  a  whole 
armory  was  hinted  at  in  that  passing  look  Dick 
Venner  had  given  him.  Indeed,  like  most  adven 
turous  young  persons,  he  found  a  kind  of  charm 
in  feeling  that  there  might  be  some  dangers  in  the 
way  of  his  investigations.  Some  rumors  which 
had  reached  him  about  the  supposed  suitor  'of 
Elsie  Venner,  who  was  thought  to  be  a  desperate 
kind  of  fellow,  and  whom  some  believed  to  be  an 
unscrupulous  adventurer,  added  a  curious,  roman 
tic  kind  of  interest  to  the  course  of  physiological 
and  psychological  inquiries  he  was  about  insti 
tuting. 

The  afternoon  on  The  Mountain  was  still  up 
permost  in  his  mind.  Of  course  he  knew  the 
common  stories  about  fascination.  He  had  once 
been  himself  an  eye-witness  of  the  charming  of  a 
small  bird  by  one  of  our  common  harmless  ser 
pents.  Whether  a  human  being  could  be  reached 
by  this  subtile  agency,  he  had  been  skeptical,  not 
withstanding  the  mysterious  relation  generally  felt 
to  exist  between  man  and  this  creature,  "  cursed 
above  all  cattle  and  above  every  beast  of  the 
field,"  —  a  relation  which  some  interpret  as  the 
fruit  of  the  curse,  and  others  hold  to  be  so  in 
stinctive  that  this. animal  has  been  for  that  reason 


256  ELSIE   VENNER. 

adopted  as  the  natural  symbol  of  evil.  There  was 
another  solution,  however,  supplied  him  by  his 
professional  reading.  The  curious  work  of  Mr. 
Braid  of  Manchester  had  made  him  familiar  with 
the  phenomena  of  a  state  allied  to  that  produced 
by  animal  magnetism,  and  called  by  that  writer 
by  the  name  of  hypnotism.  He  found,  by  refer 
ring  to  his  note-book,  the  statement  was,  that,  by 
fixing  the  eyes  on  a  bright  object  so  placed  as  to 
produce  a  strain  upon  the  eyes  and  eyelids,  and  to 
maintain  a  steady  fixed  stare,  there  comes  on  in  a 
few  seconds  a  very  singular  condition,  character 
ized  by  muscular  rigidity  and  inability  to  move, 
with  a  strange  exaltation  of  most  of  the  senses,  and 
generally  a  closure  of  the  eyelids,  —  this  condition 
being  followed  by  torpor. 

Now  this  statement  of  Mr.  Braid's,  well  known 
to  the  scientific  world,  and  the  truth  of  which  had 
been  confirmed  by  Mr.  Bernard  in  certain  experi 
ments  he  had  instituted,  as.it  has  been  by  many 
other  experimenters,  went  far  to  explain  the 
strange  impressions,  of  which,  waking  or  dream 
ing,  he  had  certainly  been  the  subject.  His  ner 
vous  system  had  been  in  a  high  state  of  exalta 
tion  at  the  time.  He  remembered  how  the  little 
noises  that  made  rings  of  sound  in  the  silence  of 
the  woods,  like  pebbles  dropped  in  still  waters, 
had  reached  his  inner  consciousness.  He  remem 
bered  that  singular  sensation  in  the  roots  of  the 
hair,  when  he  came  on  the  traces  of  the  girl's 
presence,  reminding  him  of  a  line  in  a  certain 


ELSIE  TENNER.  257 

poem  which  he  had  read  lately  with  a  new  and 
peculiar  interest.  He  even  recalled  a  curious  evi 
dence  of  exalted  sensibility  and  irritability,  in  the 
twitching  of  the  minute  muscles  of  the  internal 
ear  at  every  unexpected  sound,  producing  an  odd 
little  snap  in  the  middle  of  the  head,  which  proved 
to  him  that  he  was  getting  very  nervous. 

The  next  thing  was  to  find  out  whether  it  were 
possible  that  the  venomous  creature's  eyes  should 
have  served  the  purpose  of  Mr.  Braid's  "  bright 
object  "  held  very  close  to  the  person  experi 
mented  on,  or  whether  they  had  any  special 
power  which  could  be  made  the  subject  of  ex 
act  observation. 

For  this  purpose  Mr.  Bernard  considered  it  ne 
cessary  to  get  a  live  crotalus  or  two  into  his  pos 
session,  if  this  were  possible.  On  inquiry,  he 
found  that  there  was  a  certain  family  living  far 
up  the  mountain-side,  not  a  mile  from  the  ledge, 
the  members  of  which  were  said  to  have  taken 
these  creatures  occasionally,  and  not  to  be  in  any 
danger,  or  at  least  in  any  fear,  of  being  injured 
by  them.  He  applied  to  these  people,  and  offered 
a  reward  sufficient  to  set  them  at  work  to  cap 
ture  some  of  these  animals,  if  such  a  thing  were 
possible. 

A  few  days  after  this,  a  dark,  gypsy-looking 
woman  presented  herself  at  his  door.  She  held 
up  her  apron  as  if  it  contained  something  pre 
cious  in  the  bag  she  made  with  it. 

VOL.   I.  17 


258  ELSIE  TENNER. 

"  Y'wanted  some  rattlers,"  said  the  woman. 
"  Here  they  be." 

She  opened  her  apron  and  showed  a  coil  of 
rattlesnakes  lying  very  peaceably  in  its  fold. 
They  lifted  their  heads  up,  as  if  they  wanted  to 
see  what  was  going  on,  but  showed  no  sign  of 
anger. 

"  Are  you  crazy  ?  "  said  Mr.  Bernard.  "  You're 
dead  in  an  hour,  if  one  of  those  creatures  strikes 
you  !  " 

He  drew  back  a  little,  as  he  spoke  ;  it  might  be 
simple  disgust ;  it  might  be  fear ;  it  might  be 
what  we  call  antipathy,  which  is  different  from 
either,  and  which  will  sometimes  show  itself  in 
paleness,  and  even  faintness,  produced  by  objects 
perfectly  harmless  and  not  in  themselves  offensive 
to  any  sense. 

"  Lord  bless  you,"  said  the  woman,  "  rattlers 
never  touches  our  folks.  I'd  jest  'z  lieves  handle 
them  creaturs  as  so  many  striped  snakes." 

So  saying,  she  put  their  heads  down  with  her 
hand,  and  packed  them  together  in  her  apron  as 
if  they  had  been  bits  of  cart-rope. 

Mr.  Bernard  had  never  heard  of  the  power,  or, 
at  least,  the  belief  in  the  possession  of  a  power 
by  certain  persons,  which  enables  them  to  handle 
these  frightful  reptiles  with  perfect  impunity. 
The  fact,  however,  is  well  known  to  others,  and 
more  especially  to  a  very  distinguished  Professor 
in  one  of  the  leading  institutions  of  the  great 
city  of  the  land,  whose  experiences  in  the  neigh- 


ELSIE  VENDER.  259 

borhood  of  Graylock,  as  he  will  doubtless  inform 
the  curious,  were  very  much  like  those  of  the 
young  master. 

Mr.  Bernard  had  a  wired  cage  ready  for  his 
formidable  captives,  and  studied  their  habits  and 
expression  with  a  strange  sort  of  interest.  What 
did  the  Creator  mean  to  signify,  when  he  made 
such  shapes  of  horror,  and,  as  if  he  had  doubly 
cursed  this  envenomed  wretch,  had  set  a  mark 
upon  him  and  sent  him  forth,  the  Cain  of  the 
brotherhood  of  serpents  ?  It  was  a  very  curious 
fact  that  the  first  train  of  thoughts  Mr.  Bernard's 
small  menagerie  suggested  to  him  was  the  grave, 
though  somewhat  worn,  subject  of  the  origin  of 
evil.  There  is  now  to  be  seen  in  a  tall  glass  jar, 
in  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Anatomy  at 
Cantabridge  in  the  territory  of  the  Massachusetts, 
a  huge  crotalus,  of  a  species  which  grows  to  more 
frightful  dimensions  than  our  own,  under  the  hot 
ter  skies  of  South  America.  Look  at  it,  ye  who 
would  know  what  is  the  tolerance,  the  freedom 
from  prejudice,  which  can  suffer  such  an  incarna 
tion  of  all  that  is  devilish  to  lie  unharmed  in  the 
cradle  of  Nature !  Learn,  too,  that  there  are 
many  things  in  this  world  which  we  are  warned 
to  shun,  and  are  even  suffered  to'slay,  if  need  be, 
but  which  we  must  not  hate,  unless  we  would 
hate  what  God  loves  and  cares  for. 

Whatever  fascination  the  creature  might  exercise 
in  his  native  haunts,  Mr.  Bernard  found  himself 
not  in  the  least  nervous  or  affected  in  any  way 


260  ELSIE  TENNER. 

while  looking  at  his  caged  reptiles.  When  their 
cage  was  shaken,  they  would  lift  their  heads  and 
spring  their  rattles ;  but  the  sound  was  by  no 
means  so  formidable  to  listen  to  as  when  it  re 
verberated  among  the  chasms  of  the  echoing 
rocks.  The  expression  of  the  creatures  was 
watchful,  still,  grave,  passionless,  fate-like,  sug 
gesting  a  cold  malignity  which  seemed  to  be  wait 
ing  for  its  opportunity.  Their  awful,  deep-cut 
mouths  were  sternly  closed  over  the  long  hollow 
fangs  which  rested  their  roots  against  the  swollen 
poison-gland,  where  the  venom  had  been  hoard 
ing  up  ever  since  the  last  stroke  had  emptied  it. 
They  never  winked,  for  ophidians  have  no  mov 
able  eyelids,  but  kept  up  that  awful  fixed  stare 
which  made  the  two  unwinking  gladiators  the 
survivors  of  twenty  pairs  matched  by  one  of  the 
Roman  Emperors,  as  Pliny  tells  us,  in  his  "  Nat 
ural  History."  Their  eyes  did  not  flash,  but  shone 
with  a  cold  still  light.  They  were  of  a  pale- 
golden  or  straw  color,  horrible  to  look  into,  with 
their  stony  calmness,  their  pitiless  indifference, 
hardly  enlivened  by  the  almost  imperceptible 
vertical  slit  of  the  pupil,  through  which  Death 
seemed  to  be  looking  out  like  the  archer  behind 
the  long  narro\t^  loop-hole  in  a  blank  turret-wall. 
On  the  whofe,  the  caged  reptiles,  horrid  as  they 
were,  hardly  matched  his  recollections  of  what 
he  had  seen  or  dreamed  he  saw  at  the  cavern. 
These  looked  dangerous  enough,  but  yet  quiet. 
A  treacherous  stillness,  however,  —  as  the  unfor- 


ELSIE   VENNER.  261 

tunate  New  York  physician  found,  when  he  put 
his  foot  out  to  wake  up  the  torpid  creature, 
and  instantly  the  fang  flashed  through  his  boot, 
carrying  the  poison  into  his  blood,  and  death 
with  it. 

Mr.  Bernard  kept  these  strange  creatures,  and 
watched  all  their  habits  with  a  natural  curiosity. 
In  any  coUection  of  aninxals  the  venomous  beasts 
are  looked  at  with  the  greatest  interest,  just  as 
the  greatest  villains  are  most  run  after  by  the  un 
known  public.  Nobody  troubles  himself  for  a 
common  striped  snake  or  a  petty  thief,  but  a  cobra 
or  a  wife-killer  is  a  centre  of  attraction  to  all  eyes. 
These  captives  did  very  little  to  earn  their  living, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  their  living  was  not  expen 
sive,  their  diet  being  nothing  but  air,  au  naturel. 
Months  and  months  these  creatures  will  live  and 
seem  to  thrive  well  enough,  as  any  showman  who 
has  them  in  his  menagerie  will  testify,  though 
they  never  touch  anything  to  eat  or  drink. 

In  the  mean  time  Mr.  Bernard  had  become  very 
curious  about  a  class  of  subjects  not  treated  of 
in  any  detail  in  those  text-books  accessible  in 
most  country-towns,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  more 
special  treatises,  and  especially  of  the  rare  and 
ancient  works  found  on  the  shelves  of  the  larger 
city-libraries.  He  was  on  a  visit  to  old  Dr.  Kit- 
tredge  one  day,  having  been  asked  by  him  to  call 
in  for  a  few  moments  as  soon  as  convenient. 
The  Doctor  smiled  good-humoredly  when  he  asked 
him  if  he  had  an  extensive  collection  of  medical 
works. 


262  ELSIE  TENNER. 

"  Why.  no,"  said  the  old  Doctor,  "  I  haven't 
got  a  great  many  printed  books ;  and  what  I 
have  I  don't  read  quite  as  often  as  I  might,  I'm 
afraid.  I  read  and  studied  in  the  time  of  it, 
when  I  was  in  the  midst  of  the  young  men  who 
were  all  at  work  with  their  books ;  but  it's  a 
mighty  hard  matter,  when  you  go  off  alone  into 
the  country,  to  keep  up. with  all  that's  going  on 
in  the  Societies  and  the  Colleges.  I'll  tell  you, 
though,  Mr.  Langdon,  when  a  man  that's  once 
started  right  lives  among  sick  folks  for  five-and- 
thirty  years,  as  I've  done,  if  he  hasn't  got  a  library 
of  five-and-thirty  volumes  bound  up  in  his  head 
at  the  end  of  that  time,  he'd  better  stop  driving 
round  and  sell  his  horse  and  sulky.  I  know  the 
bigger  part  of  the  families  within  a  dozen  miles' 
ride.  I  know  the  families  that  have  a  way  of 
living  through  everything,  and  I  know  the  other 
set  that  have  the  trick  of  dying  without  any  kind 
of  reason  for  it  I  know  the  years  when  the 
fevers  and  dysenteries  are  in  earnest,  and  when 
they're  only  making  believe.  I  know  the  folks 
that  think  they're  dying  as  soon  as  they're  sick, 
and  the  folks  that  never  find  out  they're  sick  till 
they're  dead.  I  don't  want  to  undervalue  your 
science,  Mr.  Langdon.  There  are  things  I  never 
learned,  because  they  came  in  after  my  day,  and 
I  am  very  glad  to  send  my  patients  to  those  that 
do  know  them,  when  I  am  at  fault ;  but  I  know 
these  people  about  here,  fathers  and  mothers,  and 
children  and  grandchildren,  so  as  all  the  science 


ELSIE  VENNER.  263 

in  the  world  can't  know  them,  without  it  takes 
time  about  it,  and  sees  them  grow  up  and  grow 
old,  and  how  the  wear  and  tear  of  life  comes  to 
them.  You  can't  tell  a  horse  by  driving  him 
once,  Mr.  Langdon,  nor  a  patient  by  talking  half 
an  hour  with  him." 

"  Do  you  know  much  about  the  Venner  fam 
ily  ?  "  said  Mr.  Bernard,  in  a  natural  way  enough, 
the  Doctor's  talk  having  suggested  the  question. 

The  Doctor  lifted  his  head  with  his  accustomed 
movement,  so  as  to  command  the  young  man 
through  his  spectacles. 

"  I  know  all  the  families  of  this  place  and  its 
neighborhood,"  he  answered. 

"  We  have  the  young  lady  studying  with  us  at 
the  Institute,"  said  Mr.  Bernard. 

• "  I  know  it,"  the  Doctor  answered.     "  Is  she  a 
good  scholar  ?  " 

All  this  time  the  Doctor's  eyes  were  fixed  stead 
ily  on  Mr.  Bernard,  looking  through  the  glasses. 

"  She  is  a  good  scholar  enough,  but  I  don't 
know  what  to  make  of  her.  Sometimes  I  think 
she  is  a  little  out  of  her  head.  Her  father,  I  be 
lieve,  is  sensible  enough  ; —  what  sort  of  a  woman 
was  her  mother,  Doctor?  —  I  suppose  of  course, 
you  remember  all  about  her  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  knew  her  mother.  She  was  a  very 
lovely  young  woman."  —  The  Doctor  put  his 
hand  to  his  forehead  and  drew  a  long  breath. — 
"  What  is  there  you  notice  out  of  the  way  about 
Elsie  Venner  ?  " 


264  ELSIE    VENNER. 

"  A  good  many  things,"  the  master  answered. 
"  She  shuns  all  the  other  girls.  She  is  getting  a 
strange  influence  over  my  fellow-teacher,  a  young 
lady,  —  you  know  Miss  Helen  Darley,  perhaps  ? 
I  am  afraid  this  girl  will  kill  her.  I  never  saw  or 
heard  of  anything  like  it,  in  prose  at  least ;  —  do  you 
remember  much  of  Coleridge's  Poems,  Doctor  ?  " 

The  good  old  Doctor  had  to  plead  a  negative. 

"  Well,  no  matter.  Elsie  would  have  been 
burned  for  a  witch  in  old  times.  I  have  seen 
the  girl  look  at  Miss  Darley  when  she  had  not 
the  least  idea  of  it,  and  all  at  once  I  would  see 
her  grow  pale  and  moist,  and  sigh,  and  move 
round  uneasily,  and  turn  towards  Elsie,  and  per 
haps  get  up  and  go  to  her,  or  else  have  slight 
spasmodic  movements  that  looked  like  hysterics ; 
—  do  you  believe  in  the  evil  eye,  Doctor  ?  " 

"  Mr.  Langdon,"  the  Doctor  said,  solemnly, 
"  there  are  strange  things  about  Elsie  Venner,  — 
very  strange  things.  This  was  what  I  wanted  to 
speak  to  you  about.  Let  me  advise  you  all  to.be 
very  patient  with  the  girl,  but  also  very  careful. 
Her  love  is  not  to  be  desired,  and  "  —  he  spoke 
in  a  lower  tone  — "  her  hate  is  to  be  dreaded. 
Do  you  think  she  has  any  special  fancy  for  any 
body  else  in  the  school  besides  Miss  Darley  ?  " 

Mr.  Bernard  could  not  stand  the  old  Doctor's 
spectacled  eyes  without  betraying  a  little  of  the 
feeling  natural  to  a  young  man  to  whom  a  home 
question  involving  a  possible  sentiment  is  put 
suddenly. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  265 

"  I  have  suspected,"  he  said,  —  "I  have  had  a 

kind  of  feeling  —  that  she  Well,  come, 

Doctor,  —  I  don't  know  that  there's  any  use  in 
disguising  the  matter,  —  I  have  thought  Elsie 
Venner  had  rather  a  fancy  for  somebody  else,  — 
I  mean  myself." 

There  was  something  so  becoming  in  the  blush 
with  which  the  young  man  made  this  confession, 
and  so  manly,  too,  in  the  tone  with  which  he 
spoke,  so  remote  from  any  shallow  vanity,  such 
as  young  men  who  are  incapable  of  love  are  apt 
to  feel,  when  some  loose  tendril  of  a  woman's 
fancy  which  a  chance  wind  has  blown  against 
them  twines  about  them  for  the  want  of  anything 
better,  that  the  old  Doctor  looked  at  him  admir 
ingly,  and  could  not  help  thinking  that  it  was  no 
wonder  any  young  girl  should  be  pleased  with  him. 

"  You  are  a  man  of  nerve,  Mr.  Langdon  ?  "  said 
the  Doctor. 

"  I  thought  so  till  very  lately,"  he  replied.  "  I 
am  not  easily  frightened,  but  I  don't  know  but 
I  might  be  bewitched  or  magnetized,  or  whatever 
it  is  when  one  is  tied  up  and  cannot  move.  I 
think  I  can  find  nerve  enough,  however,  if  there 
is  any  special  use  you  want  to  put  it  to." 

"  Let  me  ask  you  one  more  question,  Mr. 
Langdon.  Do  you  find  yourself  disposed  to  take 
a  special  interest  in  Elsie,  —  to  fall  in  love  with 
her,  in  a  word?  Pardon  me,  for  I  do  not  ask 
from  curiosity,  but  a  much  more  serious  motive." 

"  Elsie  interests  me,"  said  the  young  man,  "  in- 


266  ELSIE  VENNER. 

terests  me  strangely.  She  has  a  wild  flavor  in 
her  character  which  is  wholly  different  from  that 
of  any  human  creature  I  ever  saw.  She  has 
marks  of  genius,  —  poetic  or  dramatic,  —  I  hardly 
know  which.  She  read  a  passage  from  Keats's 
'Lamia'  the  other  day,  in  the  school-room,  in 
such  a  way  that  I  declare  to  you  I  thought  some 
of  the  girls  would  faint  or  go  into  fits.  Miss  Dar- 
ley  got  up  and  left  the  room,  trembling  all  over. 
Then  I  pity  her,  she  is  so  lonely.  The  girls  are 
afraid  of  her,  and  she  seems  to  have  either  a  dis 
like  or  a  fear  of  them.  They  have  all  sorts  of 
painful  stories  about  her.  They  give  her  a  name 
which  no  human  creature  ought  to  bear.  They 
say  she  hides  a  mark  on  her  neck  by  always 
wearing  a  necklace.  She  is  very  graceful,  you 
know,  and  they  will  have  it  that  she  can  twist 
herself  into  all  sorts  of  shapes,  or  tie  herself  in  a 
knot,  if  she  wants  to.  There  is  not  one  of  them 
that  will  look  her  in  the  eyes.  I  pity  the  poor 
girl ;  but,  Doctor,  I  do  not  love  her.  I  would  risk 
my  life  for  her,  if  it  would  do  her  any  good,  but 
it  would  be  in  cold  blood.  If  her  hand  touches 
mine,  it  is  not  a  thrill  of  passion  I  feel  running 
through  me,  but  a  very  different  emotion.  Oh, 
Doctor!  there  must  be  something  in  that  creat 
ure's  blood  which  has  killed  the  humanity  in  her. 
God  only  knows  the  cause  that  has  blighted  such 
a  soul  in  so  beautiful  a  body !  No,  Doctor,  I  do 
not  love  the  girl." 

"  Mr.  Langdon,"   said  the   Doctor,  "  you   are 


ELSIE  VENNER.  267 

young,  and  I  am  old.  Let  me  talk  to  you  with 
an  old  man's  privilege,  as  an  adviser.  You  have 
come  to  this  country-town  without  suspicion,  and 
you  are  moving  in  the  midst  of  perils.  There 
are  things  which  I  must  not  tell  you  now ;  but  I 
may  warn  you.  Keep  your  eyes  open  and  your 
heart  shut.  If,  through  pitying  that  girl,  you 
ever  come  to  love  her,  you  are  lost.  If  you  deal 
carelessly  with  her,  beware!  This  is  not  all. 
There  are  other  eyes  on  you  beside  Elsie  Ven- 
ner's.  —  Do  you  go  armed  ?  " 

"  I  do  !  "  said  Mr.  Bernard,  —  and  he  "  put  his 
hands  up  "  in  the  shape  of  fists,  in  such  a  way  as 
to  show  that  he  was  master  of  the  natural  weap 
ons  at  any  rate. 

The  Doctor  could  not  help  smiling.  But  his 
face  fell  in  an  instant. 

"  You  may  want  something  more  than  those 
tools  to  work  with.  Come  with  me  into  my 
sanctum." 

The  Doctor  led  Mr.  Bernard  into  a  small  room 
opening  out  of  the  study.  It  was  a  place  such 
as  anybody  but  a  medical  man  would  shiver  to 
enter.  There  was  the  usual  tall  box  with  its 
bleached,  rattling  tenant ;  there  were  jars  in  rows 
where  "  interesting  cases "  outlived  the  grief  of 
widows  and  heirs  in  alcoholic  immortality,  —  for 
your  "  preparation-jar"  is  the  true  "  monumentum 
cere  perennius  "  ;  there  were  various  semipossibil- 
ities  of  minute  dimensions  and  unpromising  de 
velopments;  there  were  shining  instruments  of 


268  ELSIE  VENNER. 

evil  aspect,  and  grim  plates  on  the  walls,  and  on 
one  shelf  by  itself,  accursed  and  apart,  coiled  in 
a  long  cylinder  of  spirit,  a  huge  crotalus,  rough- 
scaled,  flat-headed,  variegated  with  dull  bands, 
one  of  which  partially  encircled  the  neck  like  a 
collar,  —  an  awful  wretch  to  look  upon,  with 
murder  written  all  over  him  in  horrid  hieroglyph 
ics.  Mr.  Bernard's  look  was  riveted  on  this  creat 
ure,  —  not  fascinated  certainly,  for  its  eyes  looked 
like  white  beads,  being  clouded  by  the  action  of 
the  spirits  in  which  it  had  been  long  kept,  —  but 
fixed  by  some  indefinite  sense  of  the  renewal  of 
a  previous  impression;  —  everybody  knows  the 
feeling,  with  its  suggestion  of  some  past  state  of 
existence.  There  was  a  scrap  of  paper  on  the 
jar,  with  something  written  on  it.  He  was  reach 
ing  up  to  read  it  when  the  Doctor  touched  him 
lightly. 

"  Look  here,  Mr  Langdon  ! "  he  said,  with  a 
certain  vivacity  of  manner,  as  if  wishing  to  call 
away  his  attention,  —  "  this  is  my  armory." 

The  Doctor  threw  open  the  door  of  a  small 
cabinet,  where  were  disposed  in  artistic  patterns 
various  weapons  of  offence  and  defence,  —  for  he 
was  a  virtuoso  in  his  way,  and  by  the  side  of  the 
implements  of  the  art  of  healing  had  pleased  him 
self  with  displaying  a  collection  of  those  other 
instruments,  the  use  of  which  renders  the  first 
necessary. 

"  See  which  of  these  weapons  you  would  like 
best  to  carry  about  you,"  said  the  Doctor. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  269 

Mr.  Bernard  laughed,  and  looked  at  the  Doc 
tor  as  if  he  half  doubted  whether  he  was  in 
earnest. 

"  This  looks  dangerous  enough,"  he  said,  — 
"  for  the  man  who  carries  it,  at  least." 

He  took  down  one  of  the  prohibited  Spanish 
daggers  or  knives  which  a  traveller  may  occa 
sionally  get  hold  of  and  smuggle  out  of  the 
country.  The  blade  was  broad,  trowel-like,  but 
the  point  drawn  out  several  inches,  so  as  to  look 
like  a  skewer. 

"  This  must  be  a  jealous  bull-fighter's  weapon," 
he  said,  and  put  it  back  in  its  place. 

Then  he  took  down  an  ancient-looking  broad- 
bladed  dagger,  with  a  complex  aspect  about  it, 
as  if  it  had  some  kind  of  mechanism  connected 
with  it. 

"  Take  care !  "  said  the  Doctor ;  "  there  is  a 
trick  to  that  dagger." 

He  took  it  and  touched  a  spring.  The  dagger 
split  suddenly  into  three  blades,  as  when  one 
separates  the  forefinger  and  the  ring-finger  from 
the  middle  one.  The  outside  blades  were  sharp 
on  their  outer  edge.  The  stab  was  to  be  made 
with  the  dagger  shut,  then  the  spring  touched 
and  the  split  blades  withdrawn. 

Mr.  Bernard  replaced  it,  saying,  that  it  would 
have  served  for  side-arm  to  old  Suwarrow,  who 
told  his  men  to  work  their  bayonets  back  and 
forward  when  they  pinned  a  Turk,  but  to 
wriggle  them  about  in  the  wound  when  they 
stabbed  a  Frenchman. 


270  ELSIE  VENNER. 

"  Here,"  said  the  Doctor,  "  this  is  the  thing 
you  want." 

He  took  down  a  much  more  modern  and  fa 
miliar  implement,  —  a  small,  beautifully  finished 
revolver. 

"  I  want  you  to  carry  this,"  he  said ;  "  and 
more  than  that,  I  want  you  to  practise  with  it 
often,  as  for  amusement,  but  so  that  it  may  be 
seen  and  understood  that  you  are  apt  to  have  a 
pistol  about  you.  Pistol-shooting  is  pleasant 
sport  enough,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  you 
should  not  practise  it  like  other  young  fellows. 
And  now,"  the  Doctor  said,  "  I  have  one  other 
weapon  to  give  you." 

He  took  a  small  piece  of  parchment  and  shook 
a  white  powder  into  it  from  one  of  his  medicine- 
jars.  The  jar  was  marked  with  the  name  of  a 
mineral  salt,  of  a  nature  to  have  been  serviceable 
in  case  of  sudden  illness  in  the  time  of  the  Bor- 
gias.  The  Doctor  folded  the  parchment  carefully 
and  marked  the  Latin  name  of  the  powder  upon 
it. 

"  Here,"  he  said,  handing  it  to  Mr.  Bernard,  — 
"  you  see  what  it  is,  and  you  know  what  service 
it  can  render.  Keep  these  two  protectors  about 
your  person  day  and  night ;  they  will  not  harm 
you,  and  you  may  want  one  or  the  other  or  both 
before  you  think  of  it." 

Mr.  Bernard  thought  it  was  very  odd,  and  not 
very  old-gentlemanlike,  to  be  fitting  him  out  for 
treason,  stratagem,  and  spoils,  in  this  way. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  271 

There  was  no  harm,  however,  in  carrying  a 
doctor's  powder  in  his  pocket,  or  in  amusing 
himself  with  shooting  at  a  mark,  as  he  had  often 
done  before.  If  the  old  gentleman  had  these  fan 
cies,  it  was  as  well  to  humor  h,im.  So  he  thanked 
old  Doctor  Kittredge,  and  shoojc  his  hand  warmly 
as  he  left  him. 

"  The  fellow's  hand  did  not  tremble,  nor  his 
color  change,"  the  Doctor  said,  as  he  watched 
him  walking  away.  "  He  is  one  of  the  right 
sort." 


272  ELSIE  VEXXER. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

EPISTOLARY. 

Mr.  Langdon  to  the  Professor. 
MY  DEAR  PROFESSOR, — 

You  were  kind  enough  to  promise  me  that  you 
would  assist  me  in  any  professional  or  scientific 
investigations  in  which  I  might  become  engaged. 
I  have  of  late  become  deeply  interested  in  a  class 
of  subjects  which  present  peculiar  difficulty,  and 
I  must  exercise  the  privilege  of  questioning  you 
on  some  points  upon  which  I  desire  information 
I  cannot  otherwise  obtain.  I  would  not  trouble 
you,  if  I  could  find  any  person  or  books  compe 
tent  to  enlighten  me  on  some  of  these  singular 
matters  which  have  so  excited  me.  The  leading 
doctor  here  is  a  shrewd,  sensible  man,  but  not 
versed  in  the  curiosities  of  medical  literature. 

I  proceed,  with  your  leave,  to  ask  a  considera 
ble  number  of  questions,  —  hoping  to  get  answers 
to  some  of  them,  at  least. 

Is  there  any  evidence  that  human  beings  can 
be  infected  or  wrought  upon  by  poisons,  or  other 
wise,  so  that  they  shall  manifest  any  of  the  pecu 
liarities  belonging  to  beings  of  a  lower  nature? 


ELSIE  VENNER.  273 

Can  such  peculiarities  be  transmitted  by  inheri 
tance  ?  Is  there  anything  to  countenance  the 
stories,  long  and  widely  current,  about  the  "  evil 
eye "  ?  or  is  it  a  mere  fancy  that  such  a  power 
belongs  to  any  human  being?  Have  you  any 
personal  experience  as  to  the  power  of  fasci 
nation  said  to  be  exercised  by  certain  animals? 
What  can  you  make  of  those  circumstantial 
statements  we  have  seen  in  the  papers,  of  chil 
dren  forming  mysterious  friendships  with  ophid 
ians  of  different  species,  sharing  their  food  with 
them,  and  seeming  to  be  under  some  subtile  in 
fluence  exercised  by  those  creatures  ?  Have  you 
read,  critically,  Coleridge's  poem  of  "  Christabel," 
and  Keats's  "  Lamia  "  ?  If  so,  can  you  under 
stand  them,  or  find  any  physiological  foundation 
for  the  story  of  either  ? 

There  is  another  set  of  questions  of  a  different 
nature  I  should  like  to  ask,  but  it  is  hardly  fair  to 
put  so  many  on  a  single  sheet.  There  is  one, 
however,  you  must  answer.  Do  you  think  there 
may  be  predispositions,  inherited  or  ingrafted, 
but  at  any  rate  constitutional,  which  shall  take 
out  certain  apparently  voluntary  determinations 
from  the  control  of  the  will,  and  leave  them  as 
free  from  moral  responsibility  as  the  instincts  of 
the  lower  animals  ?  Do  you  not  think  there  may 
be  a  crime  which  is  not  a  sin  ? 

Pardon  me,  my  dear  Sir,  for  troubling  you  with 
such  a  list  of  notes  of  interrogation.  There  are 
some  very  strange  things  going  on  here  in  this 

VOL.    I.  18 


274  ELSIE  VENNEI!. 

place,  country-town  as  it  is.  Country-life  is  apt 
to  be  dull ;  but  when  it  once  gets  going,  it  beats 
the  city  hollow,  because  it  gives  its  whole  mind 
to  what  it  is  about.  These  rural  sinners  make 
terrible  work  with  the  middle  of  the  Decalogue, 
when  they  get  started.  However,  I  hope  I  shall 
live  through  my  year's  school-keeping  without 
catastrophes,  though  there  are  queer  doings  about 
me  which  puzzle  me  and  might  scare  some  peo 
ple.  If  anything  should  happen,  you  will  be  one 
of  the  first  to  hear  of  it,  no  doubt.  But  I  trust 
not  to  help  out  the  editors  of  the  "  Rockland 
Weekly  Universe  "  with  an  obituary  of  the  late 
lamented,  who  signed  himself  in  life 
Your  friend  and  pupil, 

BERNARD  C.  LANGDON. 


The  Professor  to  Mr.  Langdon. 
MY  DEAR  MR.  LANGDON,  — 

I  DO  not  wonder  that  you  find  no  answer  from 
your  country  friends  to  the  curious  questions  you 
put.  They  belong  to  that  middle  region  between 
science  and  poetry  which  sensible  men,  as  they 
are  called,  are  very  shy  of  meddling  with.  Some 
people  think  that  truth  and  gold  are  always  to  be 
washed  for;  but  the  wiser  sort  are  of  opinion, 
that,  unless  there  are  so  many  grains  to  the  peck 
of  sand  or  nonsense  respectively,  it  does  not  pay 
to  wash  for  either,  so  long  as  one  can  find  any 
thing  else  to  do.  I  don't  doubt  there  is  some 


ELSIE  VENNER.  275 

truth  in  the  phenomena  of  animal  magnetism, 
for  instance  ;  but  when  you  ask  me  to  cradle 
for  it,  I  tell  you  that  the  hysteric  girls  cheat  so, 
and  the  professionals  are  such  a  set  of  pickpock 
ets,  that  I  can  do  something  better  than  hunt  for 
the  grains  of  truth  among  their  tricks  and  lies. 
Do  you  remember  what  1  used  to  say  in  my 
lectures  ?  —  or  were  you  asleep  just  then,  or  cut 
ting  your  initials  on  the  rail?  (You  see  I  can 
ask  questions,  my  young  friend.)  Leverage  is 
everything,  —  was  what  1  used  to  say ;  —  don't 
begin  to  pry  till  you  have  got  the  long  awn  on 
your  side. 

To  please  you,  and  satisfy  your  doubts  as  far 
as  possible,  I  have  looked  into  the  old  books,  — 
into  Schenckius  and  Turner  and  Kenelm  Digby 
and  the  rest,  where  I  have  found  plenty  of  curious 
stories  which  you  must  take  for  what  they  are 
worth. 

Your  first  question  I  can  answer  in  the  affirma 
tive  upon  pretty  good  authority.  Mizaldus  tells, 
in  his  "  Memorabilia,"  the  well-known  story  of  the 
girl  fed  on  poisons,  who  was  sent  by  the  king  of 
the  Indies  to  Alexander  the  Great.  "  When 
Aristotle  saw  her  eyes  sparkling  and  snapping  like 
those  of  serpents,  he  said,  '  Look  out  for  yourself, 
Alexander!  this  is  a  dangerous  companion  for 
you ! '  "  —  and  sure  enough,  the  young  lady  proved 
to  be  a  very  unsafe  person  to  her  friends.  Carda- 
nus  gets  a  story  from  Avicenna,  of  a  certain  man 
bit  by  a  serpent,  who  recovered  of  his  bite,  the 


276  ELSIE  VENNER. 

snake  dying  therefrom.  This  man  afterwards  had 
a  daughter  whom  venomous  serpents  could  not 
harm,  though  she  had  a  fatal  power  over  them. 

I  suppose  you  may  remember  the  statements  of 
old  authors  about  lycanthropy,  the  disease  in  which 
men  took  on  the  nature  and  aspect  of  wolves. 
Aetius  and  Paulus,  both  men  of  authority,  de 
scribe  it.  Altomaris  gives  a  horrid  case ;  and 
Fincelius  mentions  one  occurring  as  late  as  1541, 
the  subject  of  which  was  captured,  still  insisting 
that  he  was  a  wolf,  only  that  the  hair  of  his  hide 
was  turned  in!  Versipelles,  it  may  be  remembered, 
was  the  Latin  name  for  these  "  were-wolves." 

As  for  the  cases  where  rabid  persons  have 
barked  and  bit  like  dogs,  there  are  plenty  of  such 
on  record. 

More  singular,  or  at  least  more  rare,  is  the  ac 
count  given  by  Andreas  Baccius,  of  a  man  who 
was  struck  in  the  hand  by  a  cock,  with  his  beak, 
and  who  died  on  the  third  day  thereafter,  looking 
for  all  the  world  like  a  fighting-cock,  to  the  great 
horror  of  the  spectators. 

As  to  impressions  transmitted  at  a  very  early 
period  of  existence,  every  one  knows  the  story  of 
King  James's  fear  of  a  naked  sword,  and  the  way 
it  is  accounted  for.  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  says,  — 
"  I  remember  when  he  dubbed  me  Knight,  in  the 
ceremony  of  putting  the  point  of  a  naked  sword 
upon  my  shoulder,  he  could  not  endure  to  look 
upon  it,  but  turned  his  face  another  way,  inso 
much,  that,  in  lieu  of  touching  my  shoulder,  he 


ELSIE    VENNER.  277 

had  almost  thrust  the  point  into  my  eyes,  had 
not  the  Duke  of  Buckingham  guided  his  hand 
aright."  It  is  he,  too,  who  tells  the  story  of  the 
mulberry  mark  upon  the  neck  of  a  certain  lady  of 
high  condition,  which  "  every  year,  in  mulberry 
season,  did  swell,  grow  big,  and  itch."  And  Gaf- 
farel  mentions  the  case  of  a  girl  born  with  the 
figure  of  a.  fish  on  one  of  her  limbs,  of  which  the 
wonder  was,  that,  when  the  girl  did  eat  fish,  this 
mark  put  her  to  sensible  pain.  But  there  is  no 
end  to  cases  of  this  kind,  and  I  could  give  some 
of  recent  date,  if  necessary,  lending  a  certain 
plausibility  at  least  to  the  doctrine  of  transmitted 
impressions. 

I  never  saw  a  distinct  case  of  evil  eye,  though  I 
have  seen  eyes  so  bad  that  they  might  produce 
strange  effects  on  very  sensitive  natures.  But  the 
belief  in  it  under  various  names,  fascination,  jet- 
tatura,  etc.,  is  so  permanent  and  universal,  from 
Egypt  to  Italy,  and  from  the  days  of  Solomon  to 
those  of  Ferdinand  of  Naples,  that  there  must  be 
some  peculiarity,  to  say  the  least,  on  which  the 
opinion  is  based.  There  is  very  strong  evidence 
that  some  such  power  is  exercised  by  certain  of 
the  lower  animals.  Thus,  it  is  stated  on  good 
authority  that  "  almost  every  animal  becomes 
panic-struck  at  the  sight  of  the  rattlesnake,  and 
seems  at  once  deprived  of  the  power  of  mo 
tion,  or  the  exercise  of  its  usual  instinct  of  self- 
preservation."  Other  serpents  seem  to  share  this 
power  of  fascination,  as  the  Cobra  and  the  Bu- 


278  KLSIE   VKXXER. 

cephalus  Capensis.     Some  think  that  it  is  nothing 
but  fright ;  others  attribute  it  to  the 

"  strange  powers  that  lie 
Within  the  magic  circle  of  the  eye,"  — 

as  Churchill  said,  speaking  of  Garrick. 

You  ask  me  about  those  mysterious  and  fright 
ful  intimacies  between  children  and  serpents,  of 
which  so  many  instances  have  been  recorded.  I 
am  sure  I  cannot  tell  what  to  make  of  them.  I 
have  seen  several  such  accounts  in  recent  papers, 
but  here  is  one  published  in  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury,  which  is  as  striking  as  any  of  the  more  mod 
ern  ones : — 

"  Mr.  Herbert  Jones  of  Monmouth,  when  he  was 
a  little  Boy,  was  used  to  eat  his  Milk  in  a  Gar 
den  in  the  Morning,  and  was  no  sooner  there,  but 
a  large  Snake  always  came,  and  eat  out  of  the 
Dish  with  him,  and  did  so  for  a  considerable  time, 
till  one  Morning,  he  striking  the  Snake  on  the 
Head,  it  hissed  at  him.  Upon  which  he  told  his 
Mother  that  the  Baby  (for  so  he  call'd  it)  cry'd 
Hiss  at  him.  His  Mother  had  it  kill'd,  which  oc 
casioned  him  a  great  Fit  of  Sickness,  and  'twas 
thought  would  have  dy'd,  but  did  recover." 

There  was  likewise  one  "  William  Writtle,  con 
demned  at  Maidston  Assizes  for  a  double  murder, 
told  a  Minister  that  was  with  him  after  he  was 
condemned,  that  his  mother  told  him,  that  when 
he  was  a  Child,  there  crept  always  to  him  a 
Snake,  wherever  she  laid  him.  Sometimes  she 


ELSIE  VENNER.  279 

would  convey  him  up  Stairs,  and  leave  him  never 
so  little,  she  should  be  sure  to  find  a  Snake  in  the 
Cradle  with  him,  but  never  perceived  it  did  him 
any  harm." 

One  of  the  most  striking  alleged  facts  con 
nected  with  the  mysterious  relation  existing  be 
tween  the  serpent  and  the  human  species  is  the 
influence  which  the  poison  of  the  Crotalus,  taken 
internally,  seemed  to  produce  over  the  moral  fac 
ulties,  in  the  experiments  instituted  by  Dr.  Hering 
at  Surinam.  There  is  something  frightful  in  the 
disposition  of  certain  ophidians,  as  the  whip- 
snake,  which  darts  at  the  eyes  of  cattle  without 
any  apparent  provocation  or  other  motive.  It  is 
natural  enough  that  the  evil  principle  should  have 
been  represented  in  the  form  of  a  serpent,  but  it 
is  strange  to  think  of  introducing  it  into  a  human 
being  like  cow-pox  by  vaccination. 

You  know  all  about  the  Psylli,  or  ancient  ser 
pent-tamers,  I  suppose.  Savary  gives  an  account 
of  the  modern  serpent-tamers  in  his  "  Letters  on 
Egypt."  These  modern  jugglers  are  in  the  habit 
of  making  the  venomous  Naja  counterfeit  death, 
lying  out  straight  and  stiff,  changing  it  into  a 
rod,  as  the  ancient  magicians  did  with  their  ser 
pents,  (probably  the  same  animal,)  in  the  time  of 
Moses. 

I  am  afraid  I  cannot  throw  much  light  on 
"  Christabel "  or  "  Lamia  "  by  any  criticism  I  can 
offer.  Geraldine,  in  the  former,  seems  to  be  sim 
ply  a  malignant  witch-woman,  with  the  evil  eye, 


280  ELSIE  VENXER. 

but  with  no  absolute  ophidian  relationship.  La 
mia  is  a  serpent  transformed  by  magic  into  a 
woman.  The  idea  of  both  is  mythological,  and 
not  in  any  sense  physiological.  Some  women 
unquestionably  suggest  the  image  of  serpents ; 
men  rarely  or  never.  I  have  been  struck,  like 
many  others,  with  the  ophidian  head  and  eye  of 
the  famous  Rachel. 

Your  question  about  inherited  predispositions, 
as  limiting  the  sphere  of  the  will,  and,  conse 
quently,  of  moral  accountability,  opens  a  very 
wide  range  of  speculation.  I  can  give  you  only 
a  brief  abstract  of  my  own  opinions  on  this  deli 
cate  and  difficult  subject.  Crime  and  sin,  being 
the  preserves  of  two  great  organized  interests, 
have  been  guarded  against  all  reforming  poachers 
with  as  great  jealousy  as  the  Royal  Forests.  It 
is  so  easy  to  hang  a  troublesome  fellow !  It  is  so 
much  simpler  to  consign  a  soul  to  perdition,  or 
say  masses,  for  money,  to  save  it,  than  to  take 
the  blame  on  ourselves  for  letting  it  grow  up  in 
neglect  and  run  to  ruin  for  want  of  humanizing 
influences!  They  hung  poor,  crazy  Bellingham 
for  shooting  Mr.  Perceval.  The  ordinary  of  New 
gate  preached  to  women  who  were  to  swing  at 
Tyburn  for  a  petty  theft  as  if  they  were  worse 
than  other  people, — just  as  though  he  would  not 
have  been  a  pickpocket  or  shoplifter,  himself,  if 
he  had  been  born  in  a  den  of  thieves  and  bred  up 
to  steal  or  starve !  The  English  law  never  began 
to  get  hold  of  the  idea  that  a  crime  was  not  neces- 


ELSIE  VENXEK.  281 

sarily  a  sin,  till  Hadfield,  who  thought  he  was  the 
Saviour  of  mankind,  was  tried  for  shooting  at 
George  the  Third; — lucky  for  him  that  he  did 
not  hit  his  Majesty ! 

It  is  very  singular  that  we  recognize  all  the 
bodily  defects  that  unfit  a  man  for  military  ser 
vice,  and  all  the  intellectual  ones  that  limit  his 
range  of  thought,  but  always  talk  at  him  as  if  all 
his  moral  powers  were  perfect.  I  suppose  we 
must  punish  evil-doers  as  we  extirpate  vermin; 
but  I  don't  know  that  we  have  any  more  right  to 
judge  them  than  we  have  to  judge  rats  and  mice, 
which  are  just  as  good  as  cats  and  weasels,  though 
we  think  it  necessary  to  treat  them  as  criminals. 

The  limitations  of  human  responsibility  have 
never  been  properly  studied,  unless  it  be  by  the 
phrenologists.  You  know  from  my  lectures  that 
I  consider  phrenology,  as  taught,  a  pseudo-science, 
and  not  a  branch  of  positive  knowledge;  bu',  lor 
all  that,  we  owe  it  an  immense  debt.  It  has 
melted  the  world's  conscience  in  its  crucible,  and 
cast  it  in  a  new  mould,  with  features  less  like 
those  of  Moloch  and  more  like  those  of  humanity. 
If  it  has  failed  to  demonstrate  its  system  of  spe 
cial  correspondences,  it  has  proved  that  there  are 
fixed  relations  between  organization  and  mind 
and  character.  It  has  brought  out  that  great 
doctrine  of  moral  insanity,  which  has  done  more 
to  make  men  charitable  and  soften  legal  and  the 
ological  barbarism  than  any  one  doctrine  that  I 
can  think  of  since  the  message  of  peace  and 
good-will  to  men. 


282  ELSIE  VEKNER. 

Automatic  action  in  the  moral  world  ;  the  reflex 
movement  which  seems  to  be  self-determination, 
and  has  been  hanged  and  howled  at  as  such 
(metaphorically)  for  nobody  knows  how  many 
centuries :  until  somebody  shall  study  this  as 
Marshall  Hall  has  studied  reflex  nervous  action 
in  the  bodily  system,  I  would  not  give  much  for 
men's  judgments  of  each  other  characters.  Shut 
up  the  robber  and  the  defaulter,  we  must.  But 
what  if  your  oldest  boy  had  been  stolen  from  his 
cradle  and  bred  in  a  North-Street  cellar  ?  What 
if  you  are  drinking  a  little  too  much  wine  and 
smoking  a  little  too  much  tobacco,  and  your  son 
takes  after  you,  and  so  your  poor  grandson's  brain 
being  a  little  injured  in  physical  texture,  he  loses 
the  fine  moral  sense  on  which  you  pride  yourself, 
and  doesn't  see  the  difference  between  signing 
another  man's  name  to  a  draft  and  his  own  ? 

I  suppose  the  study  of  automatic  action  in  the 
moral  world  (you  see  what  I  mean  through  the 
apparent  contradiction  of  terms)  may  be  a  danger 
ous  one  in  the  view  of  many  people.  It  is  liable 
to  abuse,  no  doubt.  People  are  always  glad  to 
get  hold  of  anything  which  limits  their  responsi 
bility.  But  remember  that  our  moral  estimates 
come  down  to  us  from  ancestors  who  hanged 
children  for  stealing  forty  shillings'  worth,  and 
sent  their  souls  to  perdition  for  the  sin  of  being 
born,  —  who  punished  the  unfortunate  families 
of  suicides,  and  in  their  eagerness  for  justice  exe 
cuted  one  innocent  person  every  three  years,  on 
the  average,  as  Sir  James  Mackintosh  tells  us. 


ELSIE  VENNER.  283 

I  do  not  know  in  what  shape  the  practical 
question  may  present  itself  to  you ;  but  I  will 
tell  you  my  rule  in  life,  and  I  think  you  will  find 
it  a  good  one.  Treat  bad  men  exactly  as  if  they 
were  insane.  They  are  in-sane,  out  of  health, 
morally.  Reason,  which  is  food  to  sound  minds, 
is  not  tolerated,  still  less  assimilated,  unless  ad 
ministered  with  the  greatest  caution  ;  perhaps,  not 
at  all.  Avoid  collision  with  them,  so  far  as  you 
honorably  can  ;  keep  your  temper,  if  you  can,  — 
for  one  angry  man  is  as  good  as  another ;  restrain 
them  from  violence,  promptly,  completely,  and 
with  the  least  possible  injury,  just  as  in  the  case 
of  maniacs, — and  when  you  have  got  rid  of  them, 
or  got  them  tied  hand  arid  foot  so  that  they  can 
do  no  mischief,  sit  down  and  contemplate  them 
charitably,  remembering  that  nine  tenths  of  their 
perversity  comes  from  outside  influences,  drunken 
ancestors,  abuse  in  childhood,  bad  company,  from 
which  you  have  happily  been  preserved,  and  for 
some  of  which  you,  as  a  member  of  society,  may 
be  fractionally  responsible.  I  think  also  that  there 
are  special  influences  which  work  in  the  blood  like 
ferments,  and  I  have  a  suspicion  that  some  of 
those  curious  old  stories  I  cited  may  have  more 
recent  parallels.  Have  you  ever  met  with  any 
cases  which  admitted  of  a  solution  like  that  which 
I  have  mentioned  ? 

Yours  very  truly, 


284  ELSIE  VEXXER. 


Bernard  Lang-don  to  Philip  Staples. 

MY  DEAR  PHILIP, — 

I  HAVE  been  for  some  months  established  in 
this  place,  turning  the  main  crank  of  the  machin 
ery  for  the  manufactory  of  accomplishments 
superintended  by,  or  rather  worked  to  the  profit 
of,  a  certain  Mr.  Silas  Peckham.  He  is  a  poor 
wretch,  with  a  little  thin  fishy  blood  in  his  body, 
lean  and  flat,  long-armed  and  large-handed,  thick- 
jointed  and  thin-muscled,  —  you  know  those  un 
wholesome,  weak-eyed,  half-fed  creatures,  that 
look  not  fit  to  be  round  among  live  folks,  and 
yet  not  quite  dead  enough  to  bury.  If  you  ever 
hear  of  my  being  in  court  to  answer  to  a  charge 
of  assault  and  battery,  you  may  guess  that  I 
have  been  giving  him  a  thrashing  to  settle  off  old 
scores ;  for  he  is  a  tyrant,  and  has  come  pretty 
near  killing  his  principal  lady-assistant  with  over 
working  her  and  keeping  her  out  of  all  decent 
privileges. 

Helen  Darley  is  this  lady's  name, — twenty-two 
or  -three  years  old,  I  should  think,  —  a  very  sweet, 
pale  woman,  —  daughter  of  the  usual  country- 
clergyman, —  thrown  on  her  own  resources  from 
an  early  age,  and  the  rest :  a  common  story,  but 
an  uncommon  person,  —  very.  All  conscience  and 
sensibility,  I  should  say,  —  a  cruel  worker,  —  no 
kind  of  regard  for  herself,  —  seems  as  fragile  and 
supple  as  a  young  willow-shoot,  but  try  her  and 


ELSIE   VENNER.  285 

you  find  she  has  the  spring  in  her  of  a  steel  cross 
bow.  I  am  glad  I  happened  to  come  to  this 
place,  if  it  were  only  for  her  sake.  I  have  saved 
that  girl's  life ;  I  am  as  sure  of  it  as  if  I  had  pulled 
her  out  of  the  fire  or  water. 

Of  course  I'm  in  love  with  her,  you  say,  —  we 
always  love  those  whom  we  have  benefited  : 
"  saved  her  life,  —  her  love  was  the  reward  of  his 
devotion,"  etc.,  etc.,  as  in  a  regular  set  novel.  In 
love,  Philip  ?  Well,  about  that,  —  I  love  Helen 
Darley  —  very  much:  there  is  hardly  anybody  I 
love  so  well.  What  a  noble  creature  she  is ! 
One  of  those  that  just  go  right  on,  do  their  own 
work  and  everybody  else's,  killing  themselves  inch 
by  inch  without  ever  thinking  about  it,  —  singing 
and  dancing  at  their  toil  when  they  begin,  worn 
and  saddened  after  a  while,  but  pressing  steadily 
on,  tottering  by-and-by,  and  catching  at  the  rail 
by  the  way-side  to  help  them  lift  one  foot  before 
the  other,  and  at  last  falling,  face  down,  arms 
stretched  forward 

Philip,  my  boy,  do  you  know  I  am  the  sort 
of  man  that  locks  his  door  sometimes  and  cries 
his  heart  out  of  his  eyes, — that  can  sob  like  a 
woman  and  riot  be  ashamed  of  it?  I  come  of 
fighting-blood  on  one  side,  you  know ;  I  think  I 
could  be  savage  on  occasion.  But  I  am  tender, 
—  more  and  more  tender  as  I  come  into  my  ful 
ness  of  manhood.  I  don't  like  to  strike  a  man, 
(laugh,  if  you  like,  —  I  know  I  hit  hard  when  I 
do  strike,)  —/but  what  I  can't  stand  is  the  sight 

•MiMaMMV 


286  ELSIE   VEXXER. 

of  these  poor,  patient,  toiling  women,  who  never 
find  out  in  this  life  how  good  they  are,  and  never 
know  what  it  is  to  be  told  they  are  angels  while 
they  still  wear  the  pleasing  incumbrances  of  hu 
manity.!  I  don't  know  what  to  make  of  these 
cases.  To  think  that  a  woman  is  never  to  be 
a  woman  again,  whatever  she  may  come  to  as 
an  unsexed  angel,  —  and  that  she  should  die 
unloved !  Why  does  not  somebody  come  and 
carry  off  this  noble  woman,  waiting  here  all  ready 
to  make  a  man  happy  ?  Philip,£do  you  know  the 
pathos  there  is  in  the  eyes  of  unsought  women, 
oppressed  with  the  burden  of  an  inner  life  un 
shared?}  I  can  see  into  them  now  as  I  could  not 
in  those  earlier  days.  I  sometimes  think  their 
pupils  dilate  on  purpose  to  let  my  consciousness 
glide  through  them  ;  indeed,  I  dread  them,  I  come 
so  close  to  the  nerve  of  the  soul  itself  in  these 
momentary  intimacies.  You  used  to  tell  me  I 
was  a  Turk,  —  that  my  heart  was  full  of  pigeon 
holes,  with  accommodations  inside  for  a  whole 
flock  of  doves.  I  don't  know  but  I  am  still  as 
Youngish  as  ever  in  my  ways,  —  Brigham- 
Youngish,  I  mean;  at  any  rate,  I  always  want 
to  give  a  little  love  to  all  the  poor  things  that 
cannot  have  a  whole  man  to  themselves.  If  they 
would  only  be  contented  with  a  little !  ' 

Here  now  are  two  girls  in  this  school  where  I 
am  teaching.  One  of  them,  Rosa  M.,  is  not 
more  than  sixteen  years  old,  I  think  they  say ; 
but  Nature  has  forced  her  into  a  tropical  luxuri- 


ELSIE  VENNER.  287 

ance  of  beauty,  as  if  it  were  July  with  her,  in 
stead  of  May.  I  suppose  it  is  all  natural  enough 
that  this  girl  should  like  a  young  man's  attention, 
even  if  he  were  a  grave  school-master;  but  the 
eloquence  of  this  young  thing's  look  is  unmis 
takable,  —  and  yet  she  does  not  know  the  lan 
guage  it  is.  talking,  —  they  none  of  them  do  ;  and 
there  is  where  a  good  many  poor  creatures  of  our 
good-for-nothing  sex  are  mistaken.  There  is  no 
danger  of  my  being  rash,  but  I  think  this  girl 
will  cost  somebody  his  life  yet.  She  is  one  of 
those  women  men  make  a  quarrel  about  and 
fight  to  the  death  for,  —  the  old  feral  instinct,  you 
know. 

Pray,  don't  think  I  am  lost  in  conceit,  but 
there  is  another  girl  here  who  I  begin  to  think 
looks  with  a  certain  kindness  on  me.  Her  name 
is  Elsie  V.,  and  she  is  the  only  daughter  and  heir 
ess  of  an  old  family  in  this  place.  She  is  a  por 
tentous  and  almost  fearful  creature.  If  I  should 
tell  you  all  I  know  and  half  of  what  I  fancy 
about  her,  you  would  tell  me  to  get  my  life  in 
sured  at  once.  Yet  she  is  the  most  painfully 
interesting  being, — so  handsome!  so  lonely!  — 
for  she  has  no  friends  among  the  girls,  and  sits 
apart  from  them,  —  with  black  hair  like  the  flow 
of  a  mountain-brook  after  a  thaw,  with  a  low 
browed,  scowling  beauty  of  face,  and  such  eyes 
as  were  never  seen  before,  I  really  believe,  in  any 
human  creature. 

Philip,  I  don't  know  what  to  say  about  this 


288  ELSIE  VENNER. 

Elsie.  There  is  something  about  her  I  have  not 
fathomed.  I  have  conjectures  which  I  could  not 
utter  to  any  living  soul.  I  dare  not  even  hint 
the  possibilities  which  have  suggested  themselves 
to  me.  This  I  will  say,  —  that  I  do  take  the  most 
intense  interest  in  this  young  person,  an  interest 
much  more  like  pity  than  love  in  its  common 
sense.  If  what  I  guess  at  is  true,  of  all  the  trag 
edies  of  existence  I  ever  knew  this  is  the  saddest, 
and  yet  so  full  of  meaning  !  Do  not  ask  me  any 
questions,  —  I  have  said  more  than  I  meant  to 
already  ;  but  I  am  involved  in  strange  doubts  and 
perplexities,  —  in  dangers  too,  very  possibly, — 
and  it  is  a  relief  just  to  speak  ever  so  guardedly 
of  them  to  an  early  and  faithful  friend. 

Yours  ever, 

BERNARD. 

P.  S.  I  remember  you  had  a  copy  of  Fortu- 
nius  Licetus  "  De  Monstris "  among  your  old 
books.  Can't  you  lend  it  to  me  for  a  while  ?  I 
am  curious,  and  it  will  amuse  me. 


END   OF   VOL.   I. 


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